Don’t eat stuff off the sidewalk!

Rode 19 miles today. Had a great time and only aver­aged 12 miles per hour. But I did a lot of climb­ing, which was great! I had a few moments where I won­dered if I was gonna make it, but actu­al­ly for the most part, the moun­tains in SF are pret­ty grad­ual from the West. And the first thing I did was went to Ocean Beach, so it was all going East from there.

The hard­est part was up Gold­en Gate Heights. If you know where 12^th Avenue hits Pacheco, that’s where I stopped to ask a woman for water. She’d been liv­ing there since the days when you could actu­al­ly see the view. Now there’s only one vacant lot where you can see the City from the street. She had a love­ly rock gar­den in front of her house and although she was a lit­tle hes­i­tant at first, she relaxed when she real­ized that I only want­ed water and filled my water bot­tle up with ice­wa­ter. To be hon­est, by the time I got to Gold­en Gate Heights I was tempt­ed to ask some­one for a banana or an orange or some­thing, but I was afraid to ask. That’s a sleepy neigh­bor­hood, but it’s still in the City and it seemed like that would be cross­ing a bound­ary. Fruit is pret­ty cheap, but water is super-cheap, even for a home­own­er that sees the actu­al water bill.

She said she could see the Mount David­son Cross from her liv­ing room and we talked for a cou­ple min­utes. We both agreed that it would be a ter­ri­ble shame if the Cross had been torn down, but agreed that if it was a ques­tion of whether to build it today that would be wrong. A nice moment was when I said that any San Fran­cis­co land­mark that has appeared promi­nent­ly in a Clint East­wood or Steve McQueen movie from the 70s has earned a per­ma­nent place on the land­scape and she smiled and agreed. I was pleased that she got the ref­er­ence. I should­n’t be sur­prised – she was prob­a­bly my age when Bul­litt came out and liv­ing in free­wheel­in’, lib­er­al San Fran­cis­co, so there you go. It’s nice to make that kind of con­nec­tion with some­one from anoth­er gen­er­a­tion though.

Then when I left I thanked her and she said «I’ve done my good deed for the day. i guess tonight I get to be naughty!» Wow. Any­way, if any­one is ever up on Pacheco in Gold­en Gate Heights, look for a rock gar­den with a lit­tle tree in the mid­dle of it. It’s real­ly cool and she obvi­ous­ly put a lot of work and care into it.

I was pret­ty seri­ous­ly bonk­ing though — as I wrote ear­li­er, I was tempt­ed to ask a stranger for a piece of fruit. I did­n’t have any mon­ey with me, which was a mis­take, but there you go. So when I saw an intact-look­ing half an orange on the ground… well, first I went right past it, but I turned around and went back. I picked it up and it looked clean. Not squashed or cov­ered in dirt or any­thing. I fig­ure some kid had dropped it and their moth­er told them not to eat stuff off the side­walk. Which of course, is damn good advice. Any­way, yes, I did. I washed it off as best as I could – if there had been any vis­i­ble dirt I would have passed – and ate it. Yeah, gross, I know. But that was one of the best damn oranges I ever had. hell, I prob­a­bly took a greater risk eat­ing an offered orange at Burn­ing Man, with all the dust and who knows what every­where. But still. It’s just wrong to eat stuff off the road.

So if I die tomor­row, every­one knows — it was the orange.

Any­way, from Gold­en Gate Heights, I con­tin­ued on, not real­ly know­ing where I was going, until I hit Lagu­na Hon­da and from there I knew what I had to do. I went up to Por­to­la and then up Twin Peaks. I’ve nev­er rid­den up Twin Peaks, and actu­al­ly I’ve only been up there dur­ing the day once before. It was eas­i­er than I expect­ed. It’s twisty and turny so except for the very begin­ning com­ing off of Por­to­la, it’s a pret­ty gen­tle climb. I was in my low­est gear the whole time, but I kept my cadence at a pret­ty rea­son­able lev­el. So maybe I’m get­ting bet­ter at this hill­climb­ing thing.

The view from Twin Peaks is of course stun­ning. I took a lot of pic­tures and spent a few min­utes pick­ing out places I know with my binoc­u­lars. Usu­al­ly when I have the fore­sight to bring my binoc­u­lars I for­get to use them, and when I for­get to bring them, I always wish I had them.

OK, so my body is scream­ing for food now. I’m gonna stop writ­ing. i think it’s eggs and rice for din­ner tonight. Yum!