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Riding the Train to SF for the Afternoon
May. 5th, 2026 07:59 pmMonday Hawk and I visited our friend, David, who lives in San Francisco. His condo is a short walk from the Caltrain terminal at 4th & King, so taking the train is a almost a no-brainer for us. Almost. Tickets are $8.50 each way to SF, so a roundtrip for the both of us is $34 total. That's not cheap money. Though if we drove we'd spend more than half of that on the gas alone. Then there's the cost to park, plus the non-dollar cost of having to drive vs. relaxing on the train. We took the train.
Before we headed out the door we rummaged through our bags to find our Clipper cards. Those are the Bay Area transit system cards. We don't even need them anymore, strictly speaking.... Since our last ride on Caltrain a year ago the system has started accepting tag-on, tag-off with credit cards— like a number of other big-city transit systems around the world. We still have the old cards, though, and we wanted to use up the balances on them instead of stranding $10 or $20 each on cards we may never use again.
Speaking of commuter trains in other places around the world, it's refreshing how clean and quiet Caltrain is. Of course, the train cars are relatively new, so that helps. But the reason they're new is because the system went electric less than 2 years ago. The modern electric train cars are much quieter than the old diesel locomotive cars. They're also faster. Even on our midday trip north, where we had to take a local train that makes every stop on the line, it was only 64 minutes to SF.
Once at the terminal in SF it's not far to our friend's place. You can see his building from the train platform. It's the tall one in the back.
Once outside the station we cross 4th Street. Here, in case you couldn't tell already from looking along King Street, you're in the city.
And it's not just sights that tell you you're in the city. This is San Francisco; you can smell it. In just walking one block along King Street I could smell urine, marijuana, human feces, and cigarette smoke at various spots. And this isn't even one of the bad parts of SF! 😨🤢🤮
Then we rounded the corner toward David's building, and....
...Ah, a breath of fresh air!
This sign, while illustrated to be meant for dogs, seems also to be heeded by the humans who can read it. Or maybe it's the security guard patrolling on the other side of this little park who chases the vagrants away.
We had a good visit in San Francisco. As the time wound toward 5pm David seemed peopled-out so Hawk and I bid our goodbyes. We trekked back to the station and caught the 5:20 train head south. Since it's rush hour it was an express train— just 49 minutes back to Sunnyvale!
Also since it was rush hour the train was almost full leaving the terminal. By the time we reached Millbrae pretty much every seat in our train car was occupied. And it was still quiet! The rush hour crowd on this train is very subdued. Everyone's doing email, checking their socials, or just zoned out. The loudest sound was a person cell-yelling on their phone... whom I could hear from the next car!
I joined the hush among the passengers by playing a mostly mindless game on my phone for a while before just relaxing and staring out the window. It's interesting to see all the familiar cities of the Peninsula from the perspective of the train.... Cities basically built their backs to the train for most of the past 60 years, so from these windows you see the back sides of warehouses, body shops, supply yards, etc.; all the low-rent parts of town. But every now and then, and increasingly so every year, you also see new development where cities have realized that "transit hub" is actually a real estate and commercial selling point, not a thing to hide away amid the poor people.
Before we headed out the door we rummaged through our bags to find our Clipper cards. Those are the Bay Area transit system cards. We don't even need them anymore, strictly speaking.... Since our last ride on Caltrain a year ago the system has started accepting tag-on, tag-off with credit cards— like a number of other big-city transit systems around the world. We still have the old cards, though, and we wanted to use up the balances on them instead of stranding $10 or $20 each on cards we may never use again.
Speaking of commuter trains in other places around the world, it's refreshing how clean and quiet Caltrain is. Of course, the train cars are relatively new, so that helps. But the reason they're new is because the system went electric less than 2 years ago. The modern electric train cars are much quieter than the old diesel locomotive cars. They're also faster. Even on our midday trip north, where we had to take a local train that makes every stop on the line, it was only 64 minutes to SF.
Once at the terminal in SF it's not far to our friend's place. You can see his building from the train platform. It's the tall one in the back.
Once outside the station we cross 4th Street. Here, in case you couldn't tell already from looking along King Street, you're in the city.
And it's not just sights that tell you you're in the city. This is San Francisco; you can smell it. In just walking one block along King Street I could smell urine, marijuana, human feces, and cigarette smoke at various spots. And this isn't even one of the bad parts of SF! 😨🤢🤮
Then we rounded the corner toward David's building, and....
...Ah, a breath of fresh air!
This sign, while illustrated to be meant for dogs, seems also to be heeded by the humans who can read it. Or maybe it's the security guard patrolling on the other side of this little park who chases the vagrants away.
We had a good visit in San Francisco. As the time wound toward 5pm David seemed peopled-out so Hawk and I bid our goodbyes. We trekked back to the station and caught the 5:20 train head south. Since it's rush hour it was an express train— just 49 minutes back to Sunnyvale!
Also since it was rush hour the train was almost full leaving the terminal. By the time we reached Millbrae pretty much every seat in our train car was occupied. And it was still quiet! The rush hour crowd on this train is very subdued. Everyone's doing email, checking their socials, or just zoned out. The loudest sound was a person cell-yelling on their phone... whom I could hear from the next car!
I joined the hush among the passengers by playing a mostly mindless game on my phone for a while before just relaxing and staring out the window. It's interesting to see all the familiar cities of the Peninsula from the perspective of the train.... Cities basically built their backs to the train for most of the past 60 years, so from these windows you see the back sides of warehouses, body shops, supply yards, etc.; all the low-rent parts of town. But every now and then, and increasingly so every year, you also see new development where cities have realized that "transit hub" is actually a real estate and commercial selling point, not a thing to hide away amid the poor people.
