The I'm-Not-Driving- in-the-Correct-Direction Drinking Game.

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca. — The city of San Francisco believes that left turns are evil. The city feels fine about gay marriage, has no problems with hills so steep that once each year, a runaway parked car kills someone, and even celebrates stupidity. But forget about making any left turns in the city limits — the city's made sure that's impossible.

Take a quick look at this map of San Francisco. First, as you can see by the blue arrows, almost every street in the city is a one way street. Fine. This can be frustrating, but New York has a similar design, and it's not so bad. Second, you can't tell from this map, but almost all the major arterials (Van Ness Ave., California St., and Geary Blvd.) prohibit left turns at almost every intersection. To illustrate what a nightmare this can be, let's play the I'm-Not-Driving-in-the-Correct-Direction Drinking Game in this next example. Each time you're forced to drive in a direction that's not correct, you have to drink a beer. Go!

Let's imagine that you want to drive to a friend's wedding in the Presidio (the green area in the northwestern area of the city). You're south of the city, driving north on 101. Look at the map. As you drive up Van Ness Ave., which doubles as 101 in the city, you'd like to turn left so that you can drive west. Drink a beer — left turns are mostly not allowed on Van Ness. Fine. You decide to turn right on Geary Blvd so that you can make a U-turn and then begin driving west. Drink a beer — Geary is one-way in that area, so you can't make a U-turn. Fine. You decide to turn left on another street off Geary so you can turn left again and finally head west. Drink a beer — you can't do that either, because Geary Blvd. also doesn't allow left turns. Fine. You turn right and hit Market St. (which, thankfully, is a two-way street). Drink a beer — you're driving southwest when you want to be driving northwest. By now, you've had four beers. You're driving drunk and you crash into a tree. Congratulations. Believe me; I'm not exaggerating. Try it sometime.

Admittedly, I don't live in San Francisco. Maybe there are secrets to making evil left turns that I don't know. I'm guessing they think this design makes traffic move much faster because no one can ever turn left, decreasing the amount of stopped traffic. But in the end, it's net-benefit must be lost; people simply drive around aimlessly because they can't drive in the direction they want to go. It's like a bad roller-coaster ride that never stops. And never turns left.

In fact, I did finally arrive at my friend's wedding in the Presidio, which was beautiful. Immediately upon arriving at the wedding, the groom's mother gave me a mission: make her beautiful, blond, Swedish niece fall in love with me because, apparently, I would be perfect for her. Apparently, the only obstacle standing in my way was her boyfriend — who looked like a European male model — and was from Europe — and was at this very wedding — and was wearing an Italian pinstriped suit direct from Milan — and with whom she had been dating for six years. Yes, apparently my puppetmasters had decided that my only hope for true love was this completely unattainable and attached girl. Apparently others think I am as pathetic as I think I am.

Needless to say, I spent the wedding trying to stay out of her boyfriend's way, even though I kept being not-so-subtly reminded that my mission required me to break up a six-year relationship. By the end of the wedding, I had successfully completely avoided her — which wasn't so hard, since her face was mostly stuck to her European male model boyfriend's mouth — when by some bewildering manipulation, she was sitting next to me at a table, with her boyfriend. The next thing I remember was us shamelessly flirting with her boyfriend sitting right there. We agreed to meet next time I visited Stockholm (i.e. never), I jumped into my clown car (a rented P.T. Cruiser), and drove as fast as I could away from her boyfriend. But I wasn't that afraid of him. He couldn't possibly follow me. After all, you can't turn left in San Francisco, and I made an illegal left turn to escape him and return to my hotel.

Anyone who knows me knows that I get cranky when I'm hungry. I stop talking and shift into a comatose state, walking down the street like a soulless ghost until I find a café selling smoothies or panini. This past December, I sat comatose on a flight to San Francisco after rushing from work without eating lunch.

A sign welcomes tourists to Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco, Calif. (view all San Francisco photos)

Signs for the Blue Line (left) and Red Line (right) in an AirTrain terminal at the San Francisco International Airport.

Couples skate at the Union Square Holiday Ice Rink in downtown San Francisco.

A girl I had been dating had asked me to visit her in northern California before I flew to Patagonia, and against my better judgment, I agreed to pack early and spend my originally scheduled packing-day on a whirlwind, 24-hour Bay Area tour. I admit that the excitement of hearing Orbitz's automated computer read details of a 12-flight itinerary to me over the phone distracted me from analyzing whether my plan actually made sense.

Starving, I landed in San Francisco and texted her — no one flirts over the phone anymore, and I was too hungry to talk anyway — and she agreed to meet me at the airport. But the Vice President In Charge of Signage who designed the San Francisco International's signs infuriatingly didn't think it necessary to post the airport terminal numbers inside the terminals. Based on the AirTrain map, I deduced that I stood in the International Terminal (which, according to the sign, handled all international flights and strangely, my airline, Virgin America), and my friend agreed to hop on the Blue Line train and meet me at the terminal's train station.

After waiting for her at the station for a few minutes while dreaming of garlic bread and gnocchi, she texted me, "I'm here," but she was nowhere to be seen. I texted back, "Me too but I don't see you." Eventually, she broke the apparent golden rule of modern dating (never make a phone call) and my iPhone rang. (With a real ringing sound, no less.) Quickly, we deduced that we weren't separated by parallel universes but I was in fact standing in the wrong station — apparently even the few signs posted in the terminal were wrong. After some analysis of the map of the airport's Red Line and Blue Line trains — trains which go to almost all the same destinations in opposite directions — I agreed to board the Red Line to meet her at the International Terminal. A few minutes later, I arrived there excitedly, desperate to finally eat some pasta and gelato, only to discover her still missing. I wondered if we were indeed separated by parallel universes after all, both at the same train stop but unable to see each other. Amused, I texted her again, "You're still not here." The phone rang again. Laughing, she explained that she had discovered that she was mistakenly standing at Terminal 3 instead of the International Terminal. She told me she'd jump on the Red Line, and one stop later, she'd be at my station.

I sat in the International Terminal's station, drooling as I thought of biscotti and tiramisu, watching train after train arrive and leave without my friend. Finally, after about twenty minutes, a train arrived and she finally bounded off. The confusing bidirectional trains and lack of airport signs had caused her to ride the entire train circuit in the wrong direction, until we finally found ourselves back in the same universe.

After laughing about our slapstick AirTrain comedy, we finally managed to eat at an Italian restaurant downtown, and my coma was lifted. After dinner, we proceeded to the Union Square Holiday Ice Rink, donned ill-fitting, rented skates, and tentatively skated onto the ice. A night of romantic ice-skating on rented skates is like sinking on the Titanic with your star-crossed lover — it looks beautiful on film, but it's a lot more uncomfortable than you realize. Nevertheless, below the sparkle of Macy's and an enormous Christmas tree, we enjoyed ourselves as we carved the ice — which is more than I can say for Jack and Rose and for the innocent bystander I forced to take our photograph and then e-mail it to us because I had forgotten my camera.

The next day, we took Alcatraz Cruises (really?) to Alcatraz, yet another stop on my continuing unintentional tour of the world's most awkward tourism genre: derelict island prisons. (Read about my strange trip to South Africa's Robben Island. Will Guantanamo Bay be next?) On the island, we listened to the exceptionally excellent audio tour (seriously, don't miss it), narrated by real guards and inmates who spent time in the prison. The sparkling views of San Francisco from the exercise yard and guard station made Alcatraz seem almost like a paradise, until we heard the stories of food riots, solitary confinement, and escape attempts. Admittedly, we took the requisite, "We're trapped in this cell!" photos with no irony and then proceeded to the Alcatraz gift shop. The shop sells copies of stolen guard keys, shower soap, and "Alcatraz Swim Team" T-shirts with seemingly no sense of the oddity of selling souvenirs for a high-security prison that housed serial killers. In defense of the National Park Service, the souvenirs sold at the Alcatraz gift shop are not nearly as inappropriate and insensitive as the similar souvenirs sold on Robben Island.

After returning to the mainland, eating dinner, and leisurely shopping, we lost track of the time. I realized that I'd need to get to the airport on the train in under a half hour to catch my first flight to Patagonia, an impossible feat. We ran together through the brisk winter air of downtown of San Francisco, which, compared to the horrid sprawl of Los Angeles, felt like a charming town in Southern France. We rushed into our hotel to grab my luggage and then sprinted down under the street to the subway train. When we arrived frazzled at the airport, my friend was sure I wouldn't make it to my flight, but I wanted to sprint to the check-in desk to try. She agreed to meet me there to say goodbye, assuming I wouldn't be in a hurry because I'd have to catch the next flight out. But when I made it to the desk, the helpful Virgin America agent agreed to check me in with only 20 minutes before my flight's scheduled takeoff, and I rushed through the security checkpoint-checkpoint, then through the security checkpoint, and on to my gate.

I didn't see much of my friend when I returned from Patagonia.

Maybe, after disembarking from the Red Line, she arrived at that check-in desk, confused again that I was missing. Maybe she assumed that we were truly separated by parallel universes.

My 61-year-old mom is totally extreme. Granted, she hasn't joined Shaun White on any heli snowboarding trips, but after she survived a particularly death-defying bike crash on a sandy trail during a 2002 mountain biking excursion into the Santa Rosa Mountains with me, my brother's friends started referring to her regularly as "The Extreme Mom." Reluctantly, I admit that, when the accident happened, I tried to calm her nerves by insisting that her injuries looked minor. But when family and friends saw the full arm cast that the emergency room doctors gave her to protect her badly-broken arm, the new moniker stuck.

My mom hikes up the 302 stairs above the Point Reyes Lighthouse. (view all Point Reyes photos)

Coast Redwood trees tower over visitors to Muir Woods. (view all Muir Woods photos)

The Point Reyes Lighthouse sits below a 30-story staircase.

A warning sign about wild elephant seals greets visitors in Año Nuevo State Reserve.

Northern elephant seals sleep on a beach in Año Nuevo State Reserve. (view all Pigeon Point and Año Nuevo State Reserve photos)

Kids watching kite surfers

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is California's oldest surviving seaside amusement park. (view all Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk photos)

A view of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk from its Ferris Wheel

Though the arm cast helped solidify her epithet, it wasn't the first example of her penchant for outdoor adventure. In 2004, she defeated a number of strenuous hikes with the family in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. In 2005, she joined me on a hike to the top of Washington's Mt. Pilchuck, a 6-mile trip with 2,166 feet of elevation gain and some tricky boulder scrambling at the top. Most recently, she single-handedly planned a family trip to South Africa and Botswana, a vacation that included watching a zebra give birth from only 50 feet away and stalking a solitary leopard across the African Bushveld.

Unfortunately, while I live in California, my parents live in the Midwest and my brother lives on the East Coast. Though this arrangement can be inconvenient, we often end up using this to our advantage. Why should my brother and I jump on planes to Ohio for a family meeting when all of us could, almost as easily, meet in Ecuador or Africa?

Of course, since cost is a factor, we don't always end up in such exotic locations. Because my mom usually needs to travel to the West Coast for business every year, she and I cope with the long distance between us by having a yearly get-together in California. This year, we met in San Francisco — she had some meetings there, and the city is a short drive away for me. But when we arrived, we realized that we had been there so many times that we had already seen most of the typical tourist attractions: Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Chinatown, Lombard Street, Haight-Ashbury, Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and trolley rides. Nevertheless, we stopped by Golden Gate Park to visit the Japanese Tea Garden and checked out the King Tut exhibit at the de Young Museum. (The exhibit, while fascinating, treated us to an anticlimactic finale because the Egyptian government no longer allows King Tut's Gold Mask or mummy out of Egypt.) But our excursion took only a couple hours of a three-day vacation.

Back in our hotel room, I scoured the web and sold my Extreme Mom on a set of adventurous San Francisco daytrips, and the next day, we began driving northward on one of my favorite roads in the world, Pacific Coast Highway, toward Muir Woods and Point Reyes National Seashore.

When we arrived at Muir Woods, I was disappointed to see that, since the park is only 12 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, everyone in San Francisco had had the same daytrip idea. After finally locating a parking space, we asked the ranger for a hiking map and headed off into the forest. It was easy to see why Bay Area residents flock to the park: the majestic old-growth redwood trees tower over hikers like people over ants, and the lush, dense, and shadowy environment made us feel like we were walking through an Ansel Adams photograph. We followed the two-mile, tourist-filled hiking loop through Bohemian Grove, Cathedral Grove, and Redwood Creek. Then, when I suggested that we escape the tourists by taking a detour on the Ben Johnson Trail — a much longer route that eventually connects to the 9.5-mile Dipsea Trail to Stinson Beach — my amazing Extreme Mom didn't even balk.

After returning to our car, we continued north and stopped in quaint Point Reyes Station to visit the surf shop, the deli, and Point Reyes Books. (They didn't have the book about the Congo we were looking for, but the fact that they had a large African history section was impressive.) We then proceeded down Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, the foggy, winding road past historic cattle ranches that leads to the lighthouse at Point Reyes. The trip was like driving through a cloud, but when we finally arrived at the visitor center above the lighthouse, the mist abruptly began to clear.

The lack of fog revealed the orange "CAUTION" sign warning visitors that the 302-stair climb required to visit the lighthouse is the equivalent of ascending a 30-story building, and I became a bit nervous that my mom might not be able to make it. But she didn't even flinch. When we made it to the beautiful lighthouse as the sun set behind it over the Pacific Ocean, we gazed at the dramatic coastal vistas and explored the lighthouse lens room. Afterward, she soldiered back up the stairs without complaint. Apparently the challenge of climbing up 302 stairs was nothing compared to the trouble my brother and I caused her as crying infants. Everything she had endured from the two of us growing up had prepared her for the trip to Point Reyes. (These days, I cause her significantly less trouble, I think.)

The following day, my mom and I decided again to escape the city, this time in a southerly direction, toward Año Nuevo State Park, the site of the largest mainland breeding colony for the northern elephant seal in the world. We followed the Park's four-mile trail through sand dunes, beach grass, and beach strawberry to the shore, past a hilarious (yet unnerving) "WARNING: WILD ELEPHANT SEALS" sign, which I desperately wanted to steal for my apartment. I didn't.

Impressively, the prospect of terrifying wild elephant seals ahead didn't faze my Extreme Mom. We soon arrived at the end of the trail, which stopped well short of the beach to protect the wild elephant seals from wild elephant tourists. The park's grand finale felt too much like the time I watched Coldplay from the bleachers of Seattle's KeyArena and not enough like the time I saw The Postal Service from the front row of Seattle's tiny Crocodile Cafe. Nevertheless, we were lucky enough to witness a couple male seals (bulls) fighting each other for supremacy, which they often do to establish their territory and guard their harem of female seals (cows). It felt a bit like what it might be like to watch Kayne West and Kevin Federline fight over a girl: during the fight, the female seals looked uninterested, probably off looking for the elephant seal version of George Clooney. I wasn't afraid — I knew the fighting bulls were no match for my Extreme Mom.

After our seal visit, we continued our drive south toward Santa Cruz. We stopped on PCH for awhile to watch hundreds of kite surfers take advantage of the weather. When we arrived in Santa Cruz, we visited the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, California's oldest seaside amusement park. We ate churros as we strolled down the beach, watching the surf ebb and flow, beach volleyball players spiking the ball, and teenagers on dates, screaming while riding the famous Giant Dipper roller coaster. (It's the sixth oldest in the US; the world's oldest is Leap-the-Dips in Pennsylvania.)

I asked my Extreme Mom if she wanted to ride the roller coaster, but, surprisingly, she said that she didn't think she was up for that much adrenaline. Instead, we bought Ferris Wheel tickets and relaxed in the colorful gondolas above the Boardwalk, enjoying Northern California's exceptional seaside views.

At first, I was a little disappointed that my mom didn't feel extreme enough to ride the Giant Dipper. But, as I looked down at the Beach Boardwalk from above, I realized that she doesn't need to prove herself anymore. The decades she spent working tirelessly in her demanding career, while simultaneously raising me and my brother, were extreme enough — especially when taking into account her willingness to confront wild elephant seals.

Of all people, she deserved a relaxing ride on the Ferris Wheel.