San Francisco, CA

I'm in San Francisco with my North American team all week for one of our major events. We have a few thousand attendees and 6o+ journalists onsite, so it always proves to be very hectic but rewarding.

Due to the availability of flights to the West Coast and the massive eight hour time difference, I did have a day to myself before mahem begins. I managed to squeeze in a very early morning game of golf with Tom and Frank at the gorgeous Presidio course within the National Park. It's located alongside the city (you can see the city through the trees in the picture above). From our previous experience of driving the 1000+ miles from San Diego to San Francisco along the coast on route 101, the cities are mearly dots in an otherwise seaminglessly endless landscape of beautiful countryside and ocean vistas. The picture below shows the proximity of the golf course, the downtown area of the city and the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the afternoon, fighting off the desire to sleep (body clock still on UK time), I visited the Museum of Modern Art SF (MoMASF). The interior architecture reminded me of the Guggenheim museum in New York. To be honest, I was pretty dissapointed by the range of art on display and the confined space to view them in. Compared to MoMA or the Tate Modern, this feels very provincial - an outpost of a bigger brother and not a museum in its own right. The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto or even the Art Museum of New South Wales in Sydney had a much tighter focus/mission and sense of personal identity, even though their collections are considerably smaller than MoMASF. The bottom line is that I wouldn't a visit unless it's raining hard!

Walking back from dinner that evening, I took this picture. When K, B and I last visited SF, we had a car and, on the advice of our fantastic Lonely Planet guide book, parked our car with the front wheels facing the kerb. It's law in SF to do this because if the handbrake fails on your car whilst parked, the hills really are so steep that your motor would end up careering down the city! With the wheels facing the kerb, it acts as a gravity brake just in case.