These got soul!

Tuesday I drove into San Francisco along the coast just after sunrise. I trurned right, right after the toll plaza and went along the ocean, then 25th Ave., then Geary out to Ocean Beach. My favorite route. Went to Trouble Coffee, had great latte and thin-sliced cinnamon toast, and had interesting discussion with the two 30-or-so -year-old guys working there about Bob Dylan and The Last Waltz. I was surprised that guys this genration knew Dylan’s work so intricately.

Ten years ago, Lew’s girlfriend Krystal asked if I wanted to go to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Did I! I had connections. First, I was born in San Francisco; second, my dad had walked out to the south tower on a wooden walkway above the net when the bridge was under construction in 1934. Krystal knew the bridge’s resident architect, and she and Lew had been to the top already. In mid-September I got a call and took off to meet Krystal and Bob in the parking lot on the San Francisco side. We rode in a little electric vehicle out to the south tower, and inside ascended in a tiny elevator, three of us crammed in, to the bottom plate of the top horizontal strut of the tower. From there it was a metal ladder to the top and Bob let me go first. I pushed open the hatch, climbed out, and was stunned. I was 700 feet above my hometown, seeing it from the top of this beautiful structure built 65 years earlier. It was a warm night, and we hung around up there for about 45 minutes, until the sun went down. It was surprisingly comfortable, at that height. The only scary part was when I walked out on an open-mesh metal walkway and looked down through my feet at cars 300 feet below.

Every single time I go over the bridge, or see it from the city, I think of that night.

This was the very first time I used a digital camera.

The panorama/collage is actually a 360, with Marin on the left, SF on the right. (Panoramas are way easier to do now, 10 years later.)

Photo by Cornelia at Homegrown.org

I was sort of surprised to be invited to talk at the Maker Faire (in San Mateo, Calif, on May 23-24). It’s mostly mechanical/digital inventions: robots (galore), high-tech gizmos, computer brilliance and wit. Amidst all this, Farm Aid had a flesh and blood, food and shelter corner of the fairgrounds, and it balanced out all the rest of the stuff.

It’s a fascinating event, and crowded to the gills. Another coup for Tim O’Reilly and Make Magazine: O’Reilly really has his finger on today’s digital pulse. There were a bunch of things there that were brilliant and amusing.

I gave a talk on “The ¼-acre Homestead,” tracing my 40+ years of owner-homebuilding, small-scale farming, gardening, and related matters. The food/shelter angle; I’ve always tried to take care of this first, then to get along with making a living. A pretty good audience. People are (re-) interested in doing some of this stuff themselves. Can you figure out a way to have a roof overhead without borrowing from a bank or paying rent? I think you still can, and in cities as well as the country. I’m probably going to do a book along these lines, after we finish the book on tiny houses (for which I now have an overwhelming bunch of insanely great stuff).

Much as I love NYC, there’s no place like…. I got into San Francisco around noon on Monday. (JetBlue v. cool airline.) Cruised by Ocean Beach (surf blown out, but kite surfers stylin), got latte, coffee cake at Trouble Coffee, then headed for home. On my way over the mountain, I stopped at the creek, jumped in the pool, floated over to let the waterfall pound on my head. Cold water like a slap in the chops from Mount Tamalpais. OK, so I’ve mentioned this before…

When I got home, there was this little halibut caught by fisherman Andrew, part of which we had with store potatoes and salad from the garden.

The next night I went running along the coast, then on the way back on an inland trail, stopped off at the secret swimming hole, a somewhat-hidden pond in a little valley. It’s lined with cattails, and protected from the wind so the water is like glass. I slipped in and swam across, there were birds swooping and singing all over the place. This is a blessed, magic planet, still alive in places here and there. Back to the pub for a pint of local Lagunitas pale ale. About 9 PM, headed home along the coast, listening to blues and country rock on Sirius radio, looking out at the sea and the still-darkening horizon.

It’s been raining lightly off and on, very unusual in June. When the sun came out yesterday, the honeybees were all over the poppies.

Columnist Jon Carroll, about the best part of the San Francisco Chronicle these days, closed a recent column with this poetry by Bob Dylan:

Don’t the moon look good, mama
Shinin’ through the trees?
Don’t the brakeman look good, mama
Runnin’ down the Double E
Don’t the sun look good
Goin’ down over the sea?
Don’t my gal look fine
When she’s comin’ after me?

If you are of a certain age and inclination, do you have Dylan/Stones/Beatles lyrics engraved in yr. brain, and know when you hear the first note, what the song will be?