12 to 1

Sally and I recently were in San Francisco as you can see (this shot is at Fort Baker at the north end of the bridge, before you get into the city) and we walked nearly everywhere. Our hotel was in the Marina district, within striking distance of the shops on Union and Chestnut. Lombard is a major bus route so we rode to and from Golden Gate park and the bridge for a cheap 50 cents.

I bring up the shopping because of a mileage disparity Sally and I share. We had driven down on Sunday which took about 4-1/2 hours, three of which were mine and from Interstate 80 onward it was white-knuckle work.

I had gotten up that morning around 6 and so I was a little beat by the time we got to our room at the Cow Hollow Inn on Lombard. Normally by two o'clock most days I try to grab 20 winks so that I won't doze off during dinner and put my face into the spaghetti.

"Nap? DID YOU SAY NAP!?!?", Sally said. "We are in the cosmic center of the retail universe, the cosmic core of fashion and culture in all of western civilization and you want to SLEEP!!??"

I hadn't expected it to go quite this smoothly and then she followed this up with the brisk almost rude "suggestion" that we exit the comfortable, inviting, sleepy confines of the motel room and walk around the 'hood.

"Walk" is Sally's term. Mine is more along the lines of long-distance-endurance marching. Where Sally sees one mile of "walking" I on the other hand calculate twelve. With the #28 bus stop a block away for example she nonetheless wanted to "walk" from the hotel to the Golden Gate Bridge.

And then across it.

Now it had taken about ten minutes on that bus the day before to reach the bridge. And that was at speeds I felt were impossible for a vehicle that big in traffic that tight. So, what, five miles maybe? I also discovered the main span of the bridge is 4,200 feet with the approaches at each end adding another 2,500 feet. Each. That makes the bridge 9,200 feet or 1.7424 miles long. Not counting getting to it.

One way.

So let's do the math here: 5 miles times 2 = ten miles to and from the bridge. Across and back is 1.7424 times 2 or 3.484 miles. Add it all up and you get 13.484 miles and the reason we measure 12 to one (approximately). . . Sally pretty much always claims "it is just a mile or two" regardless of where we are or what time / space warp we are in at the moment.

Oh, I forgot to mention the serious bicyclists in Spandex who were flying along the bridge sidewalk. No horns, no bells, not even "On your left!" to warn the unwary tourist. These sleek, intense-looking people threaded through the many globs of people with perfect aplomb, and good aim, too. No one was even brushed that I could see although there were a whole lot of potential deadly encounters of the first kind that somehow just never happened. These guys are the type you probably don't want to meet on a tennis court, either. Or across a chess board for that matter. WAY serious.

And finally, the painters. The bridge is a suspension span, the roadway suspended from huge cables that swoop down from the towers on each end by wires. Sadly we reached a paint crew that was just quitting for the day because I would love to have seen them at work.

We looked upward at one four-wire set and then at the two halves of the paint cabinet the guy clamps together around them and rides up to paint downward. Gad. It had windows of course but it might be better if it hadn't. Can you imagine winching up who-knows how many hundreds of feet, swaying in the wind (and usually fog or rain), and WANTING to do it every day of the week?

I learned later the riggers who work this bridge fight for their jobs. It is evidently very prideful and competitive because of the prestige and glory.

I think I'll stick to plodding a mile a day here in Lake Shastina.