Chapter 11: San Francisco
Before we arrived in Point Reyes, on the eve of our very last night of outdoor camping, I threw Umberto Eco in the trashcan along the main street of downtown Olema. I had been trying to trudge through the text since Crater Lake but my resolve had been shaken and Ben had already overcome my modest lead and won our unspoken race to the end of the book. Being left to suffer alone was more than I could bear and so, when we passed an available garbage can, I removed The Name of the Rose from my pannier and casually threw it in the trash. Ben was incensed.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Just tell me what happens.”
He scoffed at me as if, by withholding the ending, he could shame me into pulling the loose pages back out of the trash.
“Fine,” I said, “I just don’t care, but I don’t think that Christine — the kind soul holding our key to freedom — would approve of this childish behavior on your part.”
After a moment’s consideration he told me what had happened to William of Baskerville and Adso and how they had solved the caper. It turned out to be the crazy old monk in the end (the one that no one paid any attention to because of his obvious dementia) who had been killing all the other little innocent monks. The conclusion was so obvious that no one ever would have guessed it. But it still didn’t address the real issues, for me, of the true nature of William of Baskerville and Adso’s relationship, or what happened to all of the women who were violated by monks and then hung for their transgression, or the excessive use of Latin. While the former two omissions are understandable the latter is one of the unforgivable sins of any author. Never use Latin in anything you write ever. Please.
Though we were near the city-limits and could have easily found a hotel, motel, or both, for our last night of camping, Ben insisted we sleep at a remote campsite near the ocean in Point Reyes. I suppose it wasn’t truly a horrid idea — though it seemed like one at the time. I could taste the sweet victory of San Franciscan haze and fog, and the idea of turning ourselves in the opposite direction was not pleasing to me. And yet: what could I do?
After Ben reserved our camping spot and instructed me as to our future path up and over the mini-mountain that is Point Reyes, we began the first section of what would represent not only the singular moment on our trip when we would consciously choose to backtrack over a considerable distance the following day, but also what would represent the steepest section of roadway either of us had ever pedaled up in our lifetimes.
We did not know this at the time we decided to cross over the hill to the other side. All we knew is that we were at sea level, would have to go above sea level, and then return to where we began. After thirty minutes of direct tire-to-pavement climbing, addressing nearly 1,000 vertical feet, we arrived at our peak and, just before we turned off-road to find our campsite by the beach, we approached a yellow sign to the right of the road, indicating what we may expect to find shortly thereafter. We had seen many signs like this throughout the duration of our trip and had come to have a certain fondness for them. The yellow road sign had a picture of a truck, pointed down a hill, and underneath it indicated that we would be soon traveling down a grade of not less than 17%. We stopped and took a picture.
First, it is important to note, that 17% is a massive gradient. Typically, road signage seems to indicate grades above and beyond 7% — the Mount Washington Auto Road in New Hampshire, for example, averages around 11% — and, until our fateful trip I had only ever witnessed a gradient of 13% on my bicycle and it had punished me so severely as to warrant my undying and eternal respect. 17% was unheard of.
Secondly, it is important to note, that road signage that indicates one will be traveling downhill at excessive speeds is typically not helpful to a biker because one’s brakes are rarely a concern. Never has a cyclist come to the crest of pavement, seen the warning sign, and thought: geez, I better not go down this hill, I might not be able to stop. The opposite, in fact, is true: when one sees the beginnings of a terrific descent a great whooping and hollering is heard and a mad pedaling begins in order gain as much momentum as physics will allow. That is what bikers do. Therefore, the real purpose of these signs, in terms of bicycling, is as an indication of how far one has traveled up a hill — not down. Of course: they are never at the bottom of a hill, as you begin to climb up, but remain always at the top — as a marker looking back signifying what it was that had been most recently endured.
In our case, however, we had agreed to permit the unthinkable: we would return exactly the same way we had came and thus, like a woman looking through a high-powered telescope or into a crystal ball, we were able to see our future. And our future would include climbing up a 17% grade during our final hours of pedaling at the end of our bicycle trip over the Summer of 2005. And though this was fitting in the Karmic Scale of the Universe, in the moment, it was both unsettling, ironic, and exciting.
And in that present moment, at least, there was only one thing for us to do: we rode down.
DAMON: Today is July 14th, Ben and I have made it to Point Reyes, tonight is — if everything goes according to plan — our last night camping. We found a sweet camp spot. We had to bike in, no cars are allowed, hike or bike only. The mysterious mist is rolling in. We have a 17% grade to climb tomorrow morning, then a downhill that will be like slalom — giant slalom — most likely. Then we’ve got some more hills probably, until we finally get to San Francisco, at which point I shall rest my weary ankle, we shall watch television, watch movies, play video games, and do other wonderfully abhorrently masochistic things. That is all.
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