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25/03/2009
Pigorilla Power!
If it didn’t feel so comfortable, the obvious adjective to use for entering the harbour at San Francisco would probably be eerie, although I appreciate that we weren’t blessed with the fog that takes over their summers.
I woke up early after a gratefully nine hours of drug induced solid, comatose, sleep.....the kind of sleep where you spring out of bed and challenge a platoon of Orks (those mythical beasts from the underworld in Lord of the Rings) to a fight to the death....and that’s just for fun to stretch your muscles for the invigorating day ahead!
I slept in my shirt of the night before and thought nothing of not changing it while I slipped on some jeans and a coat for the now 12 degrees Celsius spring weather. I took the lift to the twelfth deck and saw that despite the time being only 06h30, there were others that had managed to rise before me, but were not looking quite as bushy-tailed as I.
We had just passed under the famous Golden Gate Bridge and were nearly at Alcatraz as we silently cut through the water towards Pier 35 where we were to berth. The sun was just threatening to rise from behind the Bay Bridge and with the city and the Sea-Lions on our starboard side, Alcatraz to port and the stillness of dawn upon us, the atmosphere was truly electrifying and I knew that another great day was upon me.
The Sea-Lions were extremely vocal in welcoming us to San Francisco and kept up their playful barking all day from their platforms at Pier 39. I could have taken photos of them all day, but despite not having my friend Nancy come to visit me, there wasn’t a moment to lose and lots to do.
My darling friend Nancy was flying down to see me from Seattle and that was such a lovely thought to have running through my head as I snuggled my pillow till the tranquilisers took over and then my first thought in the morning as I imagined us eating breakfast with the seals on Pier 39. She didn’t answer her phone for the third time in 24 hours, but one gets used to patterns in people and Nancy not answering her phone is one of hers. A mail saying that she had missed her first flight was disappointingly predictable, but the next one to say that a volcano was spewing ash all over an airport in Alaska and that she now had to fly to LA to save the world rather than balance balls on her nose with the seals was not like her at all. I have begrudgingly accepted that she probably won’t get the opportunity of using a volcano erupting as an excuse in this lifetime again so have given her the benefit of the doubt, even if based on originality alone.
While I have taken several photos of SanFran, it is a shame that photos don’t capture the “feel “of a place. There is an atmosphere in San Francisco that rivals any of the nicest places I have been to and if you throw in the beautiful cycle paths and the consideration with which cyclists are embraced, SanFran is the place!
I did about 38 km from the ship past Fisherman’s Wharf, took a photo on the pier at Golden Gate yacht club then proceeded over Golden Gate Bridge. I appreciate that once you have decided to commit suicide, that you are not too concerned with the view, but from the middle of Golden Gate Bridge, it seems like the perfect place to do it....spectacularly beautiful and unnervingly safe.....jumping seemed like the only option for a moment or two....the imp of my perverse in full swing.........and then the several kilometres to still cycle pulled me back from the thought and I travelled on my merry way.
A downhill, with a gradient that can only be appreciated while going down it, to Sausolito put me on a permanent vigil for a way back to the ship without having to go back the same way. Sausolito was lovely and after having stopped at a bicycle shop to see if they could repair one of my cleats, I walked out with a cap and a bandana instead. They did, however, let me use their phone to call my friend Jonathan Buys. I can safely say that I hadn’t seen him for at least twenty years from when we were in the army together and was looking forward to seeing him again. It was a shame when my call went straight through to voice mail and I left the appropriately unhappy message.
I thanked the shop owner for his trouble and gratefully breathed a sigh of relief that my second card worked after the first one had obviously had enough of paying out and never receiving and was happily bounced back to me by the owner.
I had received reliable directions to my next stop, “Tiburon” which consisted of no more than to follow the road along the bays edge....it’s hard to explain the feeling of riding along with the water next to you and Sausolito restaurants and bars flashing by snatched straight off the Riviera on the Mediterranean with the wind blowing through your hair and the only responsibility being that you drink enough liquid. All this combined with the green hills surrounding you covered by stunning houses and their breathtaking views makes for the ultimate question.....where’s mine?
Not there, yet, I’m afraid.....working out how many hundreds of years I would need to do this job to afford a place on those slopes is not part of my actuarial quiver of knowledge at this point, but one day, when I grow up, I am bound to apply myself and all that I need will be mine. The amazing thing is that the less I have, the less I find that I need, although I do find myself wanting more. What I am busy doing is aligning myself more to what I have as opposed to what I want and as a result I am reaching a point where everything I need, I have. I am relying on common sense a little in that I am hoping that my needs do not decide that clothes are expendable while I still have food in my stomach....efficiency can be a ruthless quality!
I had barely changed into 13th gear (I only use the last 6) after leaving my favourite Sausolito bicycle shop when Tony (the owner of the shop) came running down the road behind me screaming my name. I was just considering changing up a gear and throwing a few extra kilojoules at the problem (thinking that perhaps my second and last card had bounced as well) when he said I had a phone-call. I was, like, yeah, right, Buddy. Despite my belief of the unlikelihood of there being a God available to us, I was fast having to relinquish that fact as I was totally sure that God would have been the only person that would have known that I was gonna be at Sausolito Bicycle shop in San Francisco at 11h30am on 24 March 2009 (earth year). Anyway, I turned around to accept the call and was surprised to hear that God was sounding very much like my friend Jonathan, albeit with an American twang. Thank goodness for the little miracles in life.
Tiburon and the route there is another place that if one says too much, one expects too much, but boy, is it beautiful! I have never thought of having children.....mainly through the incapacity of being able to look after them, but also through the responsibility of not being able to feel safe about leaving them or their mother anywhere where I wasn’t there to protect them with my Thirty Eight Special blazing away and then switching across to the 9”short to finish the naughty rascals off. Perhaps a bit of an overkill of an explanation, but if ever there was a place where I felt I could give up my weapons of mandatory destruction, Tiburon and the surrounding area is a little place on earth with a splendid city close by that I could easily make home with a couple of little brats and a Fairy Princess to boot. (I think that’s an expression. Hopefully the linguists out there will back me up. For the record, I am not planning on kicking the Fairy Princess).
I took the ferry back from Tiburon after befriending Lufthansa Air Stewardess (also on a bicycle)....we chatted pleasantly during the wait for the ferry and were sitting soaking up the golden sunlight on the top deck when two passengers from Aurora (my ship) sat next to us and chatted pleasantly away mistakenly assuming we were a couple and even after explaining that we weren’t and that I was on the ship with them and Heidi worked in the air, it was impossible to get it through to them that we had just met. And indeed, it was a remarkable friendship and a delightful time that we had joking and chatting till there was nothing else to say, but good-bye.
It’s exactly that kind of encounter (as with meeting Nancy on my first contract on Oriana) that helps you realise that you can still relate to real people who have your instant respect and gratitude for giving you a little piece of your sanity back and reaffirming that you are just part of a surreal world on board, that can, and does, lose its grip on reality for a while from time to time. Little things that are just so extremely funny except when they are actually happening include a comment by the PSM (Passenger Services Manager) to the back office manager just a few days ago.....Shelley (the back-office manager from South Africa) is busy telling me something.....this Knuckle-Head walks in the room.....hears her talking.......I’m the only other person in the room.....and he asks her who she is talking to? What the f*?k! Who does he think she’s taking to? Can’t he see me? A comment like that, coupled with the fact that getting him to greet me back whenever I greet him, is as hard to swallow as trying to turn parrots teeth into diamonds.
To not greet is to ignore, but to question who someone is talking to when you are the only other living entity present is absolutely fucking outrageous! If he didn’t outrank me, I’d probably put him into a head-lock and run him through the side of the ship.
Meeting Jonathan at the San Francisco ferry terminal was a brilliant experience and I’m just sorry that I didn’t have a week or more to hang out with him, but I had to settle for a couple of beers which he bought so I was grateful to be able to put another weeks wages away for a rainy day!
Twenty years is a long time, but talking to Jonathan for a while brought made me feel that it couldn’t have been more than three, and besides, I don’t feel old enough for it to have been twenty years, so three is my story and I’m sticking to it. Thank you to Facebook and Lisa Nel otherwise Jonathan would never have known where, how, or what to use to get hold of me. There is just something about seeing a familiar face in a port that absolutely and completely changes everything forever. The “butterfly effect” is alive and well in San Francisco.
Pier 39 was already lucky to see me as the dead-line for crew to be back on-board edged passed the five minute mark.....I quickly snatched a surprise that I’d noticed earlier for my little sister, was 25 cents short for the clam chowder that the Philipino cashier let me get away with at the hot dog stand and then pumped my little pins as my bicycle sped me along to get to the ship, just in time to receive a pager message to ask why I had not yet boarded.
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