Yesterday, January 3rd, was my birthday. I had a leisurely start, eventually ending the morning in Polk St Station - a misleadingly named diner, not a railway station. Apart from the numerous model trains everywhere, and a small model train track suspended from the ceiling, it was a fairly standard-issue American diner. The food was very standard American breakfast stuff, but tasty all the same.

I then went and rented a car. This is my third visit to San Francisco, and the first time I've every felt the need to rent a car.

As-per-sodding-usual, the car rental weasels tried to talk me into an upgrade, claiming that they did have the economy model I wanted but that it was so bereft of features that I'd be better off pulling a rickshaw.

As is often the case with such people, I let them ramble on, before bringing them firmly back to the fact that I didn't want to spend any more on a rental car than the economy level, as I wasn't planning any long journeys. Eventually, they relented, and gave me a brand new '03 Camry for a little more than the economy car rate. Apparently, the Camry has the advantage of an engine, instead of the Ant-Hill Mob style "hole in the floor" propulsion system that they alluded to the economy car having.

Of course, it's just possible they had been lying.

I drove out to Ocean Beach, on the western edge of the San Francisco peninsula. This is somewhere I'd not been to since my first visit to San Francisco, back in 1996.

During that fateful first visit, Ocean Beach was the venue for what may have become known as The Soggy Yorkshireman Incident - had I had a website such as this, in those days.

My friend John and I were sat on the beach, soaking up the rays, and chatting to nice Californian student lass. We were all of us, watching the waves come up the beach towards us, each of them stopping about 15 feet short of where we were sat.

Each of them, that is, except one wave. This one wave came up the beach about 20 feet more than all the other waves.

Those of you who have a grasp of Maths will realise that this is five feet too much as far as the three of us were concerned.

I leapt to my feet, grabbing my camera, and bag of belongings. The Californian lass managed to stand up in time, but as she'd had pieces of paper with an essay she was writing, scattered around her, didn't manage to retrieve them all in time.

John, not being quite so quick on his feet as me, was still sitting, clutching his camera, as the wave hit him full-on. Sea water shot up his trouser legs, and around him. He was showered in salt water, from about his stomach downwards. I don't recall his exact words, but I suspect they my have cast aspersions upon the marital status of the sea's parents.

As you can probably imagine, I was very supportive of John in his time of trial, just as soon as I managed to stop laughing.

Yesterday, I found that nothing much had changed with the beach. It was still as uncommercialised as ever, with just a single café, and a camera obscura, as the only businesses to be found. Sadly, the camera obscura was closed for the winter.

The rest of the day was spent driving south, in an attempt to find - using the car hire company's very unhelpful maps - the Redwoods State Park, home of some Giant Redwood trees.

Let's gloss over the latter half of the afternoon. Suffice it to say, I did find the park, but it was so badly signposted that I ended up driving to the next town on Highway 1, in order to buy a map to confirm that I hadn't just imagined the tiny sign, pointing out this great State Park.

Buying a map, turned into, "buying a map and having a small meal, and several coffees", and so it was very late in the afternoon before I returned to the park entrance, to find that:

a) You couldn't drive into the park, you had to walk
b) The Giant Redwoods were a good 2-5 miles into the park
c) There was less than an hour or so of daylight left

My conclusion, to use that hackneyed British phrase, was, "Sod this for a game of soldiers.", and so I wandered across the highway, to go walk on the beach a bit, before getting back into the car, and heading back to San Francisco.

In what can only be described as "wide-eyed optimism", I decided not to go all the way back on Highway 1, but to take a side road, that would lead to a whole different highway (Highway 280), and thus provide me with a change of scene.

What the map didn't tell me was that to get to this highway, involved driving along the most winding, twisting, turning and narrow roads I've ever come across in the US. With the light fading, the fog closing in, and the trees leaning ever more menacingly over a road that seemed to be going nowhere, I found myself feeling like was in an episode of Scooby Doo, driving the Mystery Machine down a deserted road, to an abandoned fairground, or whatever.

Eventually, I found a main road, spent the next hour of driving slowly behind someone in a Jeep who'd clearly never seen a sharp bend in a road before, and therefore had no-sodding-clue-whatsoever how to drive round them without jamming his breaks on to come to an almost complete stop at every curve.

Finally Highway 280 hoved into view, and I was able to motor along at a good pace, back towards San Francisco.

That evening, I dined on some of the best Indian food I've had this side of the Atlantic. As I entered the restaurant, the cheerful head waiter greeted me thus (and I swear I'm not making this up):

Waiter: Good evening sir. Would you like The Fantasy Room?
Me: The what?!
Waiter: The Fantasy Room sir.
Me: Err... This is an Indian restaurant isn't it?
Waiter: Yes sir.
Me: Great. I'll just have a curry then.

As I said, the food was very good, and the staff very friendly. The head waiter later explained about the Fantasy Room (it's a secluded area with booths surrounded by curtains, and absolutely no S&M gear).

By that stage though, I'd had a goodly amound of Kingfisher lager, and enough Indian food, that if I had used the Fantasy Room, for even a waifer-thin mint, I'd have been doing an impression of Monsieur Creosote. Not something that's advisable... at my age.