The Prevail
Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in November 2007.
The end of Daylight Saving Time in San Francisco is an interesting event. My biological clock is still waking up at 7, but the physical clock says 6. My reaction this morning was not immediately to go back to sleep, but to get on a bike. I layered on a long-sleeved jersey, got on the Fix and took off through the fog. My companion was Blur, Digitalism and The Magnetic Fields. For every throbbing tech house beat there was a lyric like “there’s time enough for sex and drugs when we get to heaven, when our pheromones are turned up to eleven.”
The Golden Gate Bridge was miserable. After powering through Fisherman’s Wharf, Fort Mason and fighting the headwind through Crissy Field, the constant condensation of damp and cold on the joinery and my glasses were threatening to end my ride involuntarily. I was swimming through oatmeal, punctuated by raisins in Gore-Tex on skinny tires.
Then at the end of the bridge: Sunlight!
Not only did the fog just drop away, it dropped away and exposed the Marin headlands climb in the morning sun, peeking over the Oakland hills. I climbed to the top of the top of the headlands to a crunchy Digitalism track. A few minutes and grunts later, I’d reached an altitude above the cloud cover and saw this: