The City by the Bay—and Breakers

 

It turns out I get through my day just fine without my morning Zen meditation that I’ve been doing for some 50 years. Without my zafu pillow and incense and getting out of the house early in Toronto, I just didn’t do it for three weeks. I did shop and cook a little and played my host’s piano, but without the higher satisfaction of the ingredients and kitchen I’m used to and the better sound of my piano. I walked a bit around their neighborhood, but most of my exercise was folded into my commute to the school and none of it through a place as gorgeous as Golden Gate Park. 

 

So it was indeed satisfying to be back in my old home in my home city. Sat zazen, ate at my own breakfast table, went out to help out in a neighborhood clean-up that my wife organizes every couple of months. I love picking up trash with the metal grabbers, enjoy the brief connection with the neighbors in our opening circle, feel the satisfaction of doing something physically useful and re-unite with some 10 square blocks around my house. 

 

On to my favorite food store, Trader Joe’s, finding some of my old favorite foods, lunch on the deck in 70-degree sunshine and knocking off one of my Crostic puzzles. Then off walking to another neighborhood store for the things Trader Joe’s doesn’t have— Chinese eggplant and fresh carrots, Adelle’s sausages, Vietnamese Spring Roll wrappers, quality tamari sauce. Head over to Golden Gate Park and start the roundabout return home, past families throwing footballs in fields, folks biking and walking and jogging, the drummers pounding away on Hippy Hill, the kids on the Carousel in Children’s Playground, stop to play a little cornhole game with myself, run into an old school parent and catch up on his kids, both now out of college and involved with music. 

 

A lot of activity as trucks unload rows and rows of portable toilets. Tomorrow is the annual “Bay to Breakers,” a 7.6 mile race that began in 1912 in an attempt to boost the city’s morale after the 1906 earthquake. It is now the longest running consecutive unchanging race in the world. In 1986, it broke the Guinness World Record at 110,000 participants. (Since surpassed by a race in Sydney). Its name comes from starting at the Bay by the Ferry Building and ending at the ocean (the Breakers) at the end of Golden Gate Park. My wife ran in it in 1978 and never again. My daughter Talia, who has run some 25 marathons, did it several times, but most of those times, in her own words, she didn’t “run it” but “drank it.”

 

Because though some people take it seriously as a race, most people see it as a big party and wear outrageous costumes or run naked or connect themselves with ropes and such. According to Wikipedia, city officials and race sponsors officially banned floats, alcohol and nudity. Bay Area residents protested that that would change the character of a race that has been a national treasure for most of the last century. Don’t know what the final decision was and I’m not going to watch it tomorrow to find out— there’s a gathering of SF School alums now graduating from high school that I want to go to. They were in 6^th grade when I retired and I’ve kept in touch with some of them—gone to one’s dance concert, met another at the Jewish Home and such. 

 

Happy to be home, happy the race is still going on, happy that I’m not running in it—never have and never will! (But I did walk 6.5 miles today).