Bay to Breakers
And the setting sun lengthens the shadows in Union Square. And Babylon fights the darkness with its neons and streetlights and they all point skyward. I can find no one in the Hostel with whom to hit the town and have a hoot-a-nanny. So I buy a big Newcastle and settle into the TV room where there are posters of movies that had been filmed in San Francisco all Steve McQueen, Hitchcock, and Eastwood flicks. I turn in early and the sleep of death is warded off by the power of anticipation and the stench of rotting old buildings.Tuesday is day two here in the big city for the young man from Lubbock. I don't have a phone or an address and yet I want a job. The least I can do is get a phone. I go down to market street in search of a Sprint store. I walk for what seems like miles but I think my weariness lies the lack of good sleep and the hardness of the pavement. I find a place to buy a phone and sign a contract. I choose the least expensive phone because it is the largest model they have in the whole store. Mobile phones in the year two thousand have become remarkably and rather absurdly small. It seems as if soon people will just be holding microchips up to there domes and talking out into space like a society of schizophrenic communicators. By just after noon I have secured a phone and updated my resume to reflect my current number. I check into an internet cafe and review the job listings on a site I have been told about called craigslist.org. Turns out that craigslist will become my life line to jobs, apartments, laughs and lovers. A couple of jobs catch my eye although I am probably under qualified for both of them. I decide to spend the rest of the afternoon doing some exploration.
I assemble my bike again for the fourth time in five days. I keep having to take it apart for various safety and alternative methods of transport reasons. I find a map that is far superior to my tourist map. The map can be purchased from the hostel for two dollars fifty. I decide that I will try to ride to the beach from my downtown position, it doesn't look far on the map. This map however doesn't display elevation and I have no idea yet about the best route to avoid hills. I am not prepared for the steep climbs that many of these streets present and so I often have to get off the bike and walk beside it dumbfounded at the newness of all the things around me.
Once I get past civic center with all its filth and stench of urine and its seedy under tones and over throwns I settle into the much more neighborly area of Hayes Valley. Slowly commercial turns to residential and my nerves calm a bit. This is my first look at streets that will become so very familiar. One day soon I will haunt these streets late into the black of the night. Riding now Past Hayes Valley and into Western Addition. Left and down to the Panhandle and the cool breeze and the towering eucalyptus trees. I find the term Panhandle comforting because it is the name of the region in Texas where my silly life took shape. Awestruck I feel as I ride my ride of freedom and destiny. I admire the architecture so and even in death I will be able to feel the cool Pacific breeze. Now Golden Gate Park with its austere museums, hidden groves and leisurely lakes. I have been to this park before and I ride by the Japanese Tea Garden which I had visited in my scouting report. Where I had sat about a month before with my Russian liaison and discussed what I really want from life and thought of my fortune which had read "Stop looking for happiness
for it is right beside you." I had interpreted that to mean the city itself. And on down the hills and the long sullen stretches of the outer park to the beach where sea turns to sky and where my body comes to rest.
It is now late in the afternoon, my lungs and legs breathe hard from the ride. I call my grandmother from my new mobile phone. I tell her of the beauty all around me and I tell her of the triumph of my spirit. Most folks back home think I'm crazy and they all had occasion to tell me why I shouldn't make it even this far and how even if I make it as far as I am, standing here on Ocean Beach, that I will surely and inevitably fail for various reasons. All I can think about is how each man must measure success by his or her own standards. The sun starts to sink low and the sand starts to get cold under my feet.
When I return to the Hostel I call my friend Jay. He is in Portland and had tried living San Francisco earlier this year but didn't like the vibe very much. He offers to call his ex-girlfriend and ask her if I can stay with her for a while. This is my first big break. I call him back later and he has talked to her. She says just to give her a call and Jay gives me her number. I thank him profusely. He tells me her name is Jenny and she is really cool so it should work out.
So I call Jenny, this complete stranger, friend of a friend, and ask politely if I can stay with her for any length of time. She tells me to show up for dinner at 7 o'clock the following night. She explains that if we get along OK I can stay with her for one week. As I hang up the phone, now the payphone at the hostel, I feel a sense of elation. Although it is only my second night there the hostel begins to seem like my own personal prison, but only the first that I would concoct in by time between the Breakers and the Bay there in Babylon.
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