This is a catch-up (catsup, ketchup?) post. We went to the Winchester Mystery House exactly one month ago – January 6th – but I haven’t gotten around to blogging about it until now, partly because the few pictures that we took (interior photos are not permitted) didn’t come off the camera until this morning.

Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House is a curiosity. It is big, as a mansion should be – over 100 rooms – but it is not beautiful like the Newport mansions. It is just plain weird. It was the home of the eccentric widow of a guy who made a fortune selling Winchester rifles to the army. She believed that bad things would happen if construction on the house ended, so she just kept building for over 30 years. I think that is what attracted us to the place: it reminded us of our time in Somerville. Non-stop construction as a way of life.

It is also a bit of a time capsule of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The earthquake damaged parts of the house (and in fact trapped Mrs Winchester in one of the front rooms for several hours), but rather than repair the damage like any normal homeowner would, she just closed off the damaged rooms and continued building on other wings.

She was tiny – under 5 feet tall – and not well, so the staircases have very low risers – about 4 inches for each step. This makes some of the staircase *very* long. That doesn’t include the staircase that goes nowhere – it just rises to the ceiling and stops. You are left to wonder “what was she thinking?”

Start of the tour

There is very little in the house that is beautiful. One of the exceptions is the stained glass. There isn’t much stained glass on display in the lived-in rooms, but she left an entire storage room filled with Tiffany stained glass that is worth over half a million dollars today.

We visited on a very cold, dank day. It somehow didn’t occur to us that for $30 each we would be getting a tour of an unheated house. By the time it was over we were both thoroughly chilled. If you go, pick a warm day.

Courtyard

We only toured the house. We arrived too late for the basement tour and it was too cold to tour the gardens. I imagine that there is some good stuff that we didn’t see. They also offer a night tour which would be… spooky.

Gift shop

The place is too weird to recommend highly. But if you ever find yourself in San Jose with nothing to do… there it is.

We will be leaving the Bay Area in a few days and will be leaving a lot of “wish list” things undone. We aren’t going to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and we aren’t going to ride the cable cars. But we can cross off Alcatraz because we went there last Sunday.

It was a beautiful day – better than we could hope for, really – sunny, high around 66. Saturday had been very foggy and I was expecting more of that. Which explains why I didn’t take my sunglasses. So I squinted a lot.

The drive from Morgan Hill to Pier 33 on the Embarcadero takes about 70 minutes. We didn’t get off until 8:53 and our ferry left at 10:30, so we were cutting it a little close. Still, not to worry, because there is a parking lot directly across from the pier. We got there, as expected, a few minutes after 10. I queued up to buy a ticket from the self-service machine – the only machine in the lot. And it jammed. After wasting a few minutes seeing if it could be fixed, I gave up, hustled Jett back into the rental car and drove off, madly searching for another parking lot. We found one about two blocks away, parked, hustled back to the pier and queued up to get our prepaid tickets. The line was short, thankfully, because the ferry was already boarding when I got to the window. We made it, but with less than 5 minutes to spare.

Pier 33, with 5 minutes to spare

The bay was calm and the scenery was stunning. We got a nice water view of the Golden Gate Bridge, which I guess is as close as we will get.

Golden Gate Bridge

It is just a 10-minute ride to Alcatraz Island. The signs are left as they were when the prison was closed in 1963. Signs of the 1969 Indian occupation are also still intact.

Welcoming(?) sign

Our ferry, leaving to return to SF

There was a brief introductory speech from a park ranger and a 15-minute film, then a long walk up the hill to the prison.

Alcatraz dock

Climb to the prison

View from The Rock

The path to the prison

Prison wall

The tour of the prison proper is a self-guided audio tour. It was very informative. We saw the cells where the guards were shot in the 1946 prison riot, one of the cells from which the only “successful” escape was made (though it is suspected that all 3 escapees died in the bay, so the level of success is debatable) and Block D where Al Capone and the Birdman spent their days.

Broadway

Grand Central

Visitation booth

Typical cell

The Yard

Isolation

Utility shaft and escape route

Visitor’s entrance

Visitors side of visitation area

Warden’s house (what’s left, anyway)

SF from Alcatraz

The escape cell

The kitchen knife rack

Leaving Alcatraz – something many could not do

Unlike most previous years, I did not hack my way through January. So even though December here was one of the coldest, rainiest ever, and January was cooler than normal, my body seemed to appreciate the lack of 0-degree windchill days and stinging sleet.

Winter in California ends in February, so if I hang in there for a few more weeks, it will be a cough-free winter.

Nice!

Yesterday was my birthday. I got some nice cards and some warm telephone calls. If you called or sent a card… thank you! If you didn’t… I know where you live.

The big fun event of the day was dinner at the Claddagh Restaurant in Gilroy, one of the finest Irish restaurants we have ever found. I have mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning again. I had the “Irish grill” with salad and garlic mashed potatoes – an assortment of sausages, with a lamp chop and a fried egg, served with some (really) hot mustard on the side. Jett had fish and chips which to my way of thinking is more English than Irish, but it was tasty too.

The big non-fun event of the day was taking the truck in to have the fuel filter replaced. I took it to a GMC dealer, which I knew would jack up the cost and their estimate came in at just over $200: $70 for the part and $145 for labor. Ok, fine, it had to be done. But I also asked them to check the brakes. The phone call later that morning told me that I was right to be concerned: one of the rear rotors was cracked. Damn – another $500! At least that was the thought going through my head as the service manager was talking to me. But, no, it would be more like $900. Ouch! But, again, it had to be done.

I sure miss the Harvard Street Garage. Leo would have done it for under $500, I think.

But when it was time to leave work the service manager called back. Not only was the truck not ready, but further inspection had revealed a leak in the “power boost unit” – whatever that is. It didn’t need to be fixed immediately and it wasn’t a safety issue. Yet. But he suggested that I have it replaced soon. At a cost of $900.

So my big birthday present was about $2,000 in repairs from GMC. Happy birthday, sucka.

Because the truck wasn’t available and because Jett shouldn’t drive at dusk and because I needed the exercise (I still haven’t lost that 10 lbs I gained at Christmas), I walked to the light rail station about a mile away. I wanted to take a close look at this system anyway and compare it to Boston’s Green Line. The quick assessment: it is clean, fast, fairly priced and has oodles of free parking conveniently located near expressways. But it isn’t heavily used, for the reason I previously mentioned: the roads are too damn good.

One surprise was that the fare collection system is basically an honor system. My $2.00 “one ride” ticket was actually a timestamped ticket good for 2 hours. So for two bucks I could ride the system as much as I liked, even getting off, doing some shopping and returning to my car, for the price of a “single ride.” Pretty good deal, I think.

We rode along at about 55 mph. I don’t think the Green Line, on its best day, gets above 40 mph.

I got off at the Santa Theresa station, the southern terminus for the line. This is where a commuter coming from the south would most likely park. The lot is huge and the parking is free. But at 5pm on a Wednesday, the lot was nearly empty.

Here are a few photos I took, plus one of a tree that I saw while walking to the shopping center where I agreed to meet Jett.

The trolley at Santa Theresa

Rush hour on the trolley – about 10 passengers

The nearly-empty Santa Theresa parking lot

Dramatic tree

We will be leaving San Jose a month from now, heading down to Temecula. We hope it will be a little warmer and less rainy. To say that the weather in San Jose has been a disappointment would be a gross understatement.

Rain yesterday. Frost warning tonight. High temps in the 40’s and low 50’s for the next week. Not much better than Boston in a good winter.

Temecula is a fairly small city (about 100,000 souls) that has the distinction of being about an hour from LA, an hour from San Diego and an hour from Palm Springs. We will be staying at an RV park that is situated on a golf course. Our site will be on the fairway of hole #3.

Maybe I will finally get to use those clubs.

Of course this means that I need to find another office. And I feel bad that we have barely scratched the surface of things to do in the San Francisco/San Jose area. But it is hard to get excited about doing things when it is cold and rainy.

The locals say that this has been a very unusual winter. Lucky us.

No, they don’t say “y’all” out here in California. But maybe we picked up a little Southern Drawl in Texas?

We will be having a quiet Christmas in Patience.  We will sit next to our electric fireplace, sip egg nog and open the presents that surround our tiny tree.

Electric fireplace

Gifts around our tree

Then we will sing a few songs and spend a lot of time thinking about how much we miss y’all.

We hope your Christmas is at least as nice as ours. And we hope you have a great 2013.