| Sunday, December 1, 2002 |
19:25 - Sunset on Mt. Hamilton
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Whether it's a long holiday weekend or not, Sunday seems to be turning out to be the day almost every week when I get to go out and do something visually satisfying-- sometimes it's taking in the latest movies with friends, but more often it's just me doing something on my own, something I can enjoy by myself and absorb the visuals (or take pictures) so I can repackage them and publish the results so anybody who happens to be interested (hey, it could happen) can take some kind of third-hand part in it.
Sure, it'd be nicer to do these things with somebody. But if I did, then somehow the visual record wouldn't seem to me like something I should multiplex out to the world, or try to frame as some kind of Greetings From Sunny California pamphlet to showcase why I live here. It's this way with movies too, though-- I like to see things on my own, and then I can tell everybody at once what I thought. The alternative is to share it with someone at the time, and then not have anything left to talk about after discussing and absorbing it face-to-face.
So if you take Quimby Road up into the mountains from behind my house, drop down over the crest into the Grant Lake valley, and then follow the road as it rises back up the other side again, you'll find yourself aimed squarely at Mt. Hamilton, home of Lick Observatory. The road is a favorite of motorcyclists, but while this was the first day in months that I've had the opportunity to just head out into the hills while the sun was still up (one reason I'm not wild about winter), for most other bikers this is way far into the off-season. So I had very little company on the road for most of the fifteen miles of hairpin turns and switchbacks filled with little piles of rubble that had fallen from the cliffs that the road winds around.
(By the way-- no, I didn't have my iPod with me this time. It would've been kinda neat to get a photo for the iPodLounge.com "iPods Around the World" gallery, but there's not a lot of room in a motorcycle helmet for headphones or earbuds. Nor would such a thing be very safe.)
Today wasn't the greatest day for picture-taking, unfortunately. (Hey, we can't be choosers, we who wake up so late we get four hours of sunlight on weekend days during winter.) There was a big inversion layer over the whole Bay Area, the kind that completely blankets the region and makes any kind of long-distance panorama viewing an exercise in glum futility. (The clearest air happens in spring and summer-- and oh, such air it is.) But all was not lost! If you're facing away from the sinking sun, up into the hills, the quality of the light is something to behold in and of itself. I've always been a sucker for sunlit hills against a dark cloudy backdrop; somehow it just seems so cool. And today was no exception, inversion layer or no inversion layer. The sun streamed in between the little knobby foothills and made dusty visible rays through the oak branches; it lit up the dry grass covering the hills and turned them bright gold against the dull dark gray of the sky behind. And for most of the way up, there weren't any other road warriors-- either on two wheels or four-- pushing me up the hill, their engines grumbling at my pathetic slowness. (Hey, c'mon, guys... I'm still getting my legs back.)
So I got to the top, and I pulled into the observatory parking lot just in time for the sunset. I parked next to a couple named Mike and Christine who were a lot of fun to talk to; they apparently come up to the peak fairly often, and they were well equipped with digital geek toys that they were all too willing to talk shop about. (They appreciated my tales of digital photography and wireless picture-posting from the line in Emeryville.) We spent a good half hour talking about random stuff-- motorcycles, Silicon Valley, DSL availability, home mortgages, and the fact that Mt. Hamilton was the spot where John Muir once stood and, facing east, saw the setting sun lighting up the whole line of the Sierra Nevada, whereupon he named it the Range of Light. (You can still see the Sierras from the peak, on good days. Today was not a good day.) And they had me take a couple of pictures, with their camera, of them posing with my motorcycle.
The trip was not to be without its technical hurdles, however. After the sun had just about vanished behind the large western cloud bank and I knew I'd be riding back down the mountain in a thick dusky haze, I decided to start 'er back up and head down-- except the bike wouldn't start. The starter chugged, and chugged, a-n-d c-h-u-g-g-e-d... ho boy. My battery has been fairly temperamental lately; I have to keep it hooked up to a battery tender to make sure it starts up on command. And on top of a mountain is not a good place to lose warp plasma containment. Several increasingly nervous minutes went by, many of which were spent in trying to raise a human at the other end of Christine's cellphone, which seemed strangely unable to accurately report whether it had any signal or not. (It would say it had full signal strength, dial, ring-- and suddenly say "No Service". Rinse, repeat.) So I never was able to get a call through to anybody with jumper cables. And anybody who's about to seize on this opportunity to point out that ha-haah, cellphones are useful after all... hey, shut up, at least it didn't work.
So anyway, I went back to the bike, thinking that surely the battery was drained by now-- when the starter-motor chugs start getting slower, it's not an encouraging sign, especially if you have those ultra-retina-searing carbon-arc lights that flicker while the bike is starting, presumably sucking down the equivalent of a couple of minutes in a metal vaporator every time I turn the key. But much to my surprise and then delight, when I hit the trigger again, it started right up, instantly. Whew!
I took this picture on the way down the mountain. Whether it's smog, an inversion layer, the Smokes of the Spirits, or whatever euphemism you might care to ascribe to it-- it certainly can make for some interesting sunsets. I don't much mind that I couldn't see Half Dome or Mt. Tamalpais this time up; I will, some other day. But I won't be able to get pictures like these.
But I mentioned another technical nuisance that reared its head. That would be my stupidity in pulling in behind this guy and his girlfriend in a BMW-- who had been riding my rear bumper all the way down the mountain, pushing me way faster than I was hoping to go, until I pulled over and let them by, only to catch up with them again at this infamous switchback on Quimby Road. They were pulled over, engine and lights off, obviously enjoying the romantic view-- and along I had to come, parking right behind them on a downhill slope with my kickstand in a pile of sand, so I could take this picture.
When you're aimed off the road with only a couple of feet between you and the rear bumper of a BMW, with your rear wheel higher up a curved slope and your kickstand in a pile of sand, you're kinda screwed. I spent about ten minutes frantically hurling my weight from front to back, desperately trying to back the five hundred pounds of bike up the hill so I could get myself some turning room and escape the trap. The couple in the car were blissfully unaware-- though they turned back to glare balefully at me once or twice as my light flooded past their windows rhythmically with my undulating exertions. I'd discarded my glasses-- they were fogging up under my panting breath in the cold air-- and finally I gave up, went to the driver's window, and asked him to please scoot forward just a few feet so I could get out. He seemed quite happy and accommodating, once it became obvious what my pathetic problem was. And all ended well, as I puttered my way down the rest of the hill.
But that could have happened anywhere. Quimby Road itself, however, and Mt. Hamilton, can't.
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