Last week we visited the San Francisco area and felt like tourists for the first time. I can’t recall riding a cable car during the long time I lived there, though I figure I must’ve taken a visitor or two on a ride. But with a four-year-old boy in tow, it was an imperative. We took the Powell-Mason line to the Cable Car Museum, which is the working powerhouse for the cable car system. There we saw the giant winding wheels that run the cables and lots of memorabilia and old cars. The Obama girls took a similar ride on Monday, but they traveled on brand new car No. 15, built from scratch and fresh from the paint shop. The car cost $823,000 and took 15 years to build with custom parts made from bronze, steel, and four kinds of wood.