Circle the Bay: Day 4: Fort Point to Tiburon Ferry

Day 4: Fort Point to Tiburon Ferry

(San Francisco to Tiburon)

Circle The Bay Part 3

April 24th 2018

17.1 miles in 2 hrs 46 mins

(Total: 81.0 miles in 16 hrs 12 mins)

I had a real big urge to leave Silicon Valley (and the entire Peninsula) behind and cross over to Marin County today. Things in my professional life had taken a surprising turn of events (can you say pre-layoff?) and I realized my career as a factotum employee of a Silicon Valley startup is over. From now on I'm in the executive suite with some say over the future of the organization, even if I'm the only one.

Marin County doesn't feel totally Silicon Valley'ified like San Francisco does nowadays. They have a dedicated route system of well maintained bike routes. They are investing in public transit with the new Smart Train, and ferry service is integral to the county, routes from San Francisco to Sausalito, Tiburon, and Larkspur run all day, and some even take Clipper chips (the electronic public transit payment card).

Our long time nanny/housekeeper Tina was from Marin County. She was a teenager there in the 70's and had first hand exposure to the place and time. She is now an ex-pat living in Portland Oregon, but stopped by to visit this weekend, and told me a story about a bus trip she took from Marin to Tahoe as a 19 year old girl.

Her bus for some reason broke down, and the bus company made surprise arrangements to get her on a small plane to Tahoe instead, the kind with only a single seat on each side of the aisle. The plane also waited for another bus of traveling musicians who were famous enough to be able to arrange a flight to Tahoe, instead of sitting in traffic jams on I-80.

The guy with the long hair and beard sat across from her, and they had a good conversation. She asked him if he and his companions were in a band, and he said yes with a laugh. When she got off the plane the friends she was visiting told her they were going to a Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings concert that night. She got quite a surprise to realize she had already met Willie on the plane.

But the kind of freaky thing about that flight to me is not Willy, but Waylon, who avoided crash-landing in a small plane in an Iowa farm field in the winter of 1959, when I was less than a week old. He avoided it by giving up his seat to Buddy Holly and opting to ride the cold slow tour bus instead. Tina not only got to chat with Willie, but she got to fly in a small plane with Waylon, a courageous man who kept on truckin'.*

(*finishing this blog before biking two days later, sitting at the Larkspur Ferry, I could not think of a final phrase to end it, and was about to give up when the place finally suggested something locally appropriate)