Today i continued learning how to get around the city without my Segway, and i hit two farmers’ markets using Muni.
So how’d i plot out the route? Well, first i walked down Liberty Street to Castro and then down to 20th Street, where i stopped and waited for a 24 Divisadero bus to catch up with me. When i got on and deftly swiped my divinely inspired Clipper transit card, the driver asked me to do it again. And then when i did so and the reader emitted the same little warble, she announced that that warble meant the card was underfunded. I had somehow been assuming that the card was so smart that it would notify the system to send a uniformed agent to my door to warn me when the balance on my card was getting low, and that didn’t happen. So i fed a dollar into the farebox since i didn’t have three quarters.
Told the driver i’d just started using the card a lot and had lost track of the balance. She then suggested that if i was using Muni a lot, it would be cheaper to buy a senior fast pass for the month. There are some cranky ones who get all the publicity, but there sure are lots of really nice Muni drivers.
I got out at 17th Street just as an F-Market streetcar was pulling up to the platform and rode it down to the front of the Ferry Building, walked through to the Hamada’s booth in back for eight Marsh grapefruit and passed out little sample bottles of a new product: my chocolate sauce augmented with one of Dandelion’s Columbian chocolate bars. Much saluting ensued.
Popped back out of the building just as an outbound F-Market arrived and took that back to 17th Steet, where i had to wait only about ten minutes for an outbound 24 Divisadero over the hill to 24th Street and walked downhill to the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market just beyond Sanchez. Bought some more Dandelion chocolate, three bunches of fresh green garlic, a bunch of pea sprouts, a pound of gorgeous sugar snaps, and a bunch of asparagus.
Ambled along slowly back up 24th Street, expecting the 48 bus to come along, but i got to Castro on foot just in time to catch an inbound 24 Divisadero to 22nd Street for the two block walk back home, all flat except the last half block.
So i did an entire shopping round, two farmers’ markets using three bus rides interleaved with two Muni rides all for the dollar i had to pay to get onto the first bus since the whole excursion took place within the time limit for the transfer. ta da.
So there’s a ray of sunshine in my life.
