Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

San Francisco, Part II

Muir Woods.

Innocuous sounding. Somehow comforting. Walk among redwood trees, some 800 to 1,000 years old. Nature, at her finest. What could be better than that?

Must see. Amazing. Awe-inspiring. Unbelievably beautiful.

Aaaaahhhh, yes. That all may be true. I don't know.

Have all of the do-gooders who suggested this "oh-you-have-to-see-this-before-you-die" place, obviously overwhelmed by the magnificent beauty and majesty of one of the natural wonders, forgotten how they got there? Do all of the do-gooders who suggested this "oh-you-have-to-see-this-before-you-die" place, obviously overwhelmed by the magnificent beauty and majesty of one of the natural wonders, understand that I don't want to see this immediately before I die?

And haven't even one of the do-gooders who suggested this "oh-you-have-to-see-this-before-you-die" place, obviously overwhelmed by the magnificent beauty and majesty of one of the natural wonders, read this blog before telling me, "Oh, you have to see this before you die?"

So, after the relaxing three-day visit to a spa in Sonoma, massage, body rub, facial, you know, things like that, which were oh-so-relaxing -- I never did anything like that -- friends, so-called friends, who, in real life, are actually ... demons, members of Satan's minions, had urged us to visit "oh-you-have-to-see-this-before-you-die" Muir Woods, which is "just off" 101 before we reached the Golden Gate Bridge. Uhhh, yeah ... ri-i-i-i-ight. "Just off." You gotta be fucking kidding me!!

Of course, why the fuck didn't you just tell me to drop Stacey off at the 7-11 before the climb up the "Panoramic Highway?" Panoramic Highway of Fucking Horror. You think that the Going-to-the-Fucking Sun Road was worse than anything? Having a talking GPS thing on the fucking road to and from Muir Woods, telling Stacey, "Re -- calculating ... Turn right in 1.3 miles; re -- calculating ... Turn left in 300 feet," just as we are reaching the edge of a fucking cliff with a horror-filled view of San Francisco below, the last thing she will ever see in her life ... if she was looking, which she wasn't. She was looking down, holding onto the dashboard, waiting to die.

"Please, please, PLEASE, God, Let me PASS OUT!!! Make me pass out before we go over the edge!" she cried.

The GPS voice, a women -- go figure -- with a British accent, Staffordshire, perhaps, again added to the tension, as she continued, "Re-calculating ... one foot from the edge of the cliff," or something like that. I couldn't understand her because of the whimpering, crying, and praying coming from the woman in the passenger seat.

Finally, I had to stop the car to save my sanity and pulled off the road behind two abandoned SUV's onto a gravel area about the width of the car, a dirt path leading down the cliff, a path no man in his right mind would attempt to navigate. A man pulling over, driven to sheer lunacy by his woman passenger, might turn to such an extreme to escape, however, or push his passenger out of the car and abandon her, leaving her to fend for herself, or taking her with him down that path, which was obviously the case of the drivers and passengers of the abandoned SUV's.

I, however, steeled by the torture called the Going-to-the-Fucking-Sun Road, alighted from the car and took a few photos, luxuriating in the solitude, insulated from the whimpering and crying of my passenger.

I looked down the path and into the brush on the cliffside below, but could not see any bodies that were still alive; and I was not going to risk life and limb to check farther down the cliff for survivors from the two empty SUV's.

The respite on the roadside must have had a catatonicizing effect upon my passenger because she was unusually calm, looking unblinkingly straight ahead, any whimpering, crying, and praying having ceased. I returned to the asphalt road, crumbling at its edges, winding this way and that, coiling back upon itself innumerable times, heading down, toward the maws of Cerberus.

It was only when we reached 101, when I asked if we should stop in Sausalito, that she looked over at me, eyes reddened from the crying, voice hoarse from the labored breathing, "Get me to the hotel. I need to throw up for a while," the Golden Gate Bridge looming just around the bend.

But something must have struck her, or maybe she was anesthetized, because she grabbed the camera -- on second thought, she figured I would careen off the Golden Gate Bridge ... it could happen, you know ... if I was taking pictures.

Posted by Bill at August 24, 2008 09:16 AM