Hiking and Trains

I have a colleague who has been after me for months to wake up early on Saturday and go hiking in Muir Woods with him and some other friends, and I've always declined because he means early. Last weekend, though, I finally gave in, and got Ben to come too. And by early, I mean we were literally the only people on the BART and it was dark outside:

The hike itself was gorgeous, so I'm glad we did it once, but I'm also not getting up that early on a Saturday to run around outside again.

Yesterday we went to the Millbrae Train Museum, which is right across the street from where we live, but only open a few hours on Saturday so this was the first time we've been around while they're open. It's a very small museum, but they have some neat stuff, like a 75-year-old toy train ride that rocks back and forth (and still works!):

They also have lots of old train controls you can mess around with:

The coolest part of the museum is a 1941 Pullman sleeper car that the volunteers who run the museum are in the process of restoring. The long term aspiration is to build a mile of track so folks can ride in the car for a short distance, but for now you can just walk through it. Still, it's pretty neat - all the rooms are very cleverly designed to maximize space, with all sorts of little things hidden away that fold in/out as you need them (including toilets and sinks). My favorite was the "shoe locker" tucked away under a seat in each room - apparently you would put your shoes in there before going to sleep, then the porter would access them from the hallway (which also has small doors that open into the shoe lockers), polish them, and return them so you'd have shiny shoes in the morning.

As clever as that system is, I'm glad we no longer have to worry about daily shoe polishing as a life requirement.