Raising Anchor

[ Day 1 – June 13, 2012 ]

Late morning sunlight poured into my living room, highlighting a mess of touring items. From spare bike parts to flip flops and dental floss, I had everything I needed and then some; there was nothing holding me back except my own sense of time and place.

I quickly packed my things and loaded them onto the bike. As final preparation, I donned my cycling gear, carried my bike down to the picket fence outside, and snapped a pre-departure photo. The steel frame and assorted carryon items gleamed in glossy blues and blacks, bright orange and red, and together looked brilliant against the peeling white paint and slow rot of the wooden fence, cutting a stark contrast between the allure of movement and the sleepy decay of inertia.

The Touring Rig, Fully Loaded

Once en route, I rode Martin Luther King Way through Berkeley, turned left onto Alcatraz, and hooked a right on Telegraph, riding into Oakland as I had so many times before. I shared these familiar roadways with the also-familiar bustle of drivers and pedestrians, most of whom were surely in the middle of a very normal Wednesday. I thought about the hundreds of very normal Wednesdays that I’d shuffled through, unknowingly flanked by strangers having their turn at an atypical day. I thought about how, with so few exceptions, we are secrets to one another: our joys, woes, routines, and ambitions a mystery to all but a few, if any.

Though Yosemite was almost due east, my escape from the Bay was more complicated. I had no desire to negotiate the roadway hazards and hassles of the East Bay, and had decided to bypass as much as I could by taking BART to its eastern end in Pleasanton. In this instance, I was willing to sacrifice a small amount of self-propelled legitimacy to safely and swiftly begin the “real ride” that would follow. I rode my bike to the Lake Merritt BART station, just east of Downtown Oakland and about five miles south of my starting point. There were stations closer to my house, but the quick ride across town allowed me to field test my touring rig. It proved every bit as ready for the road as I was, and I caught my train with time to spare. On board, I propped my bike against the inside of the car and took a seat. The train soon pulled away from the station, through the underground and then up along the elevated stretch that bisects the East Oakland flatland. My bicycle laid still against the handicap railing, the window above it framing a progression of scenery from urban neglect to golden hillsides and suburban sprawl.

I offboarded at Pleasanton and began my ride into the sunbaked foothills of the Diablo Range. It was an unexpectedly challenging but mostly uneventful afternoon of climbing, rewarded by a serendipitously located hilltop bar and grill as well as a breezy evening descent into Del Puerto Canyon. At Frank Raines Regional Park, I rolled past the entrance station into a deserted campground. It had an eerie, melancholy aura to it, like some long-forgotten ghost town. The place wasn’t just empty; it was neglected. Natural and manmade debris were strewn across the nearly three dozen campsites. Several garbage cans had been opened or spilled, their contents scattered, settled, and desiccated.

I took an after-dinner walk through the grounds. Gravel crunched beneath my footsteps, punctuating the silence. I passed one sleepy structure after another—a recreation hall, barbecue pits, a picnic shelter, and restrooms with showers—all evidence of a park that was clearly something special in its prime. At every spigot a stern-looking sign, clearly not of recent posting, warned that the water was no longer safe to drink. This helped explain why the park was empty, but led to questions of its own. The place seemed to have outlived the California it was built for. That so much neglect had befallen such above-average infrastructure seemed emblematic of the state’s disinvestment in itself.

I returned to my site and settled in for the evening. Lying in my sleeping bag under an open sky, I imagined what the park might have looked like in its prime: a full-sized car parked at every site, kids running through the twilight, and the bustle of a church group in the rec hall. I pictured stoneworkers building the columned walls that still marked the entrance with simple dignity. I thought about the divide between those who build things and those who neglect what’s been built for them. My eyes were heavy. My legs were sore. I didn’t ponder long.

[ Total Miles: 50 ]

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