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April 27, 2011
Skyline Boulevard
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"What should I do if there's another earthquake?" I ask my boss. "Should I get under my desk."
"Yeah. Absolutely. Just dive right under there."
"It feels pretty solid. This building looks like it's got a lot of support. Seems like it's designed to withstand earthquakes, based on all the concrete columns and all."
"It survived the quake of 89. Why? Are you worried about it? Has it been bothering you?"
"No. Not really. I've been through two earthquakes now. I'm not really worried about it. I was just wondering. That's all."
I'm not really afraid of an earthquake. What I'm really afraid of is that I'll go to bed tonight and that I'll not have lived enough today. Won't have crammed enough into this day. That's what worries me the most.
And I get off work and I think...I could go home and watch tv and crash. Probably a lot of people do that. Probably that's a reasonable thing to do.
But something compels me to go for something more. To reach for something greater than the simple way out. So after work, I climb onto my bike and I'm thinking...where to go? Where to go?
Skyline Boulevard. That's the ticket.
So I get on the 280 and head south, just balls out.
I get down to Crystal Lake and this is where I lost my laptop. I've had a lot of bikes. A slew of them. And this one time, I was running on a bike here heading North and my backpack failed and I lost everything...camera...passport..laptop...all went across the 280 in rush hour traffic. Me in the HOV lane running 95 mph.
I recovered most of my items, but I never did find the camera.
All of this comes back to me now. I'm heading the other way on the 280. Heading south. Past Crystal Lake and a sign says "35" and maybe "Skyline Boulevard". I can't recall for sure. But this lake. This highway. Everything comes back to me now. This looks right. And this is just peurile. Just as juvenile as it gets. I love to do this...to backtrack over a place years after I've been there. Testing the brain. To see what it remembers.
This, to me, is one of the greatest pleasures of being alive. To travel and revisit places you haven't been for 5 or 10 years or so. It's just the greatest thing on earth to discover and re-discover. And I'm rolling through these hills of Northern California, drifting down Skyline Boulevard through the Redwoods and this is good. This is as fun as it gets.
I pull over and put on my DriDucks. Just a little rainproof layer I carry in my backpack, but it makes all the difference when you're cold and this does warm me up quite a bit. I've been out since February and I swear it's getting colder instead of warmer.
I run down Skyline Boulevard for about 13 miles. A brilliant little two lane twisting blacktop road road weaving between the redwoods. The smell of wood fires in the mansions to stay the cold. All of this. All of this.
And now, Highway 84. Alice's Restaurant at Woodside. This is the end of my run. Skyline Boulevard keeps going. It runs down to Santa Cruz, and I'd keep going, but not in the dark. The motorcycle at night is death. Too dangerous. I mean, when it gets dark, you're planning an exit strategy. Time to pull over. Time to shut 'er down for the night.
I'm sitting here outside of Alice's Restaurant, burning daylight. Trying to decide which way back to the city. East on 84 through Redwood City and back up the 101. Or West on 84 to the coast and back up CA 1. Dunno. Dunno. Can't decide. Burning daylight. A California Highway patrol comes by me. Those of you that had Wednesday April 27th as the day that the police finally pulled me over and asked me why I'm driving a motorcycle with no plates can have a seat right over there. Because he went right past me.
So I turn right and I head for the coast on 84 West and the light is fading fast. But i'm reasonably sure this road leads to the coast. I don't have my GPS, of course. And I don't have any tools. And my headlight shines up in the trees like I'm coon hunting.
And I'm racing down the road, drifting through the redwood forests and just...well...if you've been here, you know. And if you haven't, then you really can't know. But just sort of imagine midlife crisis rolling through a twisting asphalt ribbon at dusk through the largest trees on earth and, well, that's Northern California. It's nice.
But I have no gps and I'm low on gas and I'm not really sure if I'm headed to the coast or not. I mean, I probably last went down this road about 7 years ago. And I come to a little town called La Honda and I'm like...hmmmm. I sure don't remember this town.
But the brain as a few faded snapshots of this trip. The brain thinks we'll pop out onto the coast here shortly but the road has other plans and it's leading us through the redwood forests, growing darker by the second and I almost run over a skunk, of all things.
My hands are freezing, even with my leather gloves on because my gloves are not really for warmth, per se. Just thin leather riding gloves that I found in the mark down bin up in Petaluma.
And I'm just winding it up as fast as I dare. Scrolling past the double line of reflectors that dot the center line. Praying for the coast to appear. And then, I see the sky getting lighter and I smell the salt air of the ocean and I pop out onto the coast, happy as a pig in slop.
I head north and a sign says San Francisco, 40 miles. So that means I'll have run 100 miles today, which is not bad considering that I work from nearly sun up to sun down, and I head back toward the city and think how happy I'll be to get a warm shower back on Russian Hill.
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Posted by Rob Kiser on April 27, 2011 at 10:46 PM
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