Tsunami!

To sellabrate the first day of the second quarter of school and to console my recently returned loneliness after a week with my family, I went for a bike ride this evening. The fog was rolling in and I'd heard reports of monstrous surf on Baker Beach and at Fort Point over the weekend. Wanting to watch the leftovers I headed to Fort Point first. No surf, but the fog was doing it's cool clear-under-the-bridge-foggy-from-the-deck-up business. From the fort I could see all the way across the bay and see the sun shining on Angel Island, but the deck of the bridge was a dark hazy stripe and the towers above it were non-existent. Awesome.

I booked it back up to the bridge and muscled up to Hawk Hill in the Marin headlands to enjoy the view wondering what surprises the fog would present me with. The ride across the bridge was dark (even though the sun hadn't set yet) and visibility was down to 200 feet or so. The ride up also was exciting as 20 mph winds blew billows of mist in the opposite direction I was going around the bends.

From the top, the air was the clearest I've ever seen it. I could see all the way across the bay and even the taller hills far beyond Oakland. The Golden Gate and everything south of the headlands was a sea of gray with 100-foot-tall-mile-long rolling swells coming from the west. Giant splashes of fog erupted around the headland's jagged coast where sea meets land. Only the very tips of the bridge's towers and Sutro tower were at all visible over the top of it. The wave-front was just approaching Yerba Buena island and hadn't wrapped around to engulf downtown. It was like watching a giant tsunami 700 feet tall moving in slow motion pour in through the gate and bury the city under thick gray sea water. After staring at it for twenty minutes and visiting with some other awe-struck viewers I hopped back onto my two-wheeled submarine and plunged back into the dark depths below. All along the road were other inspired folk, most just staring motionless at the scene, a few with cameras.

It was a fast and exciting ride home at the bottom of the sea-above-the-sea as water rained off of the bridge's invisible cables above, currents of wind tried to push me sideways, and other cyclists would appear and disappear like ghosts in front and behind me.

Now, I get to make dinner listening to the lonely fog horns sing their slow, deep songs to each other from each side of the gate like migrating whales.