Kiss the sky

WEEK 48

In September 2013, the new seismically stable eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened after an obscenely expensive and insanely long 12 years of work. [Consider and compare that in 1936, the original bridge including both the western and eastern spans, took three years to build and came in under budget.] No matter. For a local, the new bridge, as we still call it, is gorgeous. The sleek, curving skyway and soaring white tower, and oh, the stunning LED lighting at night. It’s a happy bridge to drive.

Even more exciting, the architects and engineers planned for a pedestrian and bike path along the new span, stretching 2.2 miles from the shoreline in Oakland to Yerba Buena Island, where the two bridges meet in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Although the path opened about four years ago, you guessed it, I have never crossed the bridge on foot … until today.

We woke to another cloudless California sky – made even more blue, I’m convinced, as we continue to shelter-in-place – with light winds and a comfortable 65 degrees. I had researched how to find the start of the walking path, not obvious yet entirely what I expected from a workhorse bridge that hosts nearly 300,000 cars a day. This is not a normal place for a person to wander.

So, my wife, Irena, and I hopped in the car, drove across the bridge (which sounds confusing, but the proposed pedestrian path on the western span is a dream stuck on paper) and made our way into the Port of Oakland, passing towers of shipping containers, truck depots and block-long warehouses, until we found the trail-head parking. (Trail meaning asphalt path.)

I remember watching in awe more than a decade ago as the new span took shape alongside the old bridge, remnants of which have been refashioned into cool-looking vista points on the shoreline at each end of the pedestrian path. Now I get to see it all, up close.

A bridge as massive as this one (the widest on the planet says Guinness), is an entirely different experience on foot. Walking is a way to slow down and experience detail at every angle, and it’s striking to be moving at a pace of say 4 miles-per-hour in a place you normally travel 15 times that speed.

Very often, as Irena and I powered up the rise from sea level to the span’s summit, I felt like I was walking along the edge of the sky. As if the white protective railing had fallen away, leaving a borderless expanse of blue all around.

Approaching the gleaming 525-foot tower, my heart beat faster, awed by the science of it all. It’s a remarkable feat – the largest single tower, self-anchored suspension span in the world, which means, as I learned, that one long cable wraps up, down and around the tower.

Being face-to-face with the cable itself, the bolts, the rigging – it wowed with a natural beauty although it was anything but natural. On one hand, I found the materials relatable on a human scale. On the other hand, standing in the open air, suspended 200 feet off the water atop an engineering marvel was humbling and unreal.

I’ll share one final observation. Not surprisingly, the volume of automobile traffic has plummeted on Bay Area roads and bridges since lockdown began in mid-March. The reality of that hit us after we made landfall on Yerba Buena and turned around to head east, back to our car in Oakland. For a solid three counts, the five eastbound lanes to the left of the walking path went completely silent. Like we entered a sound-proof chamber. It was so notable and unexpected, we looked at each other and blurted out, no cars!