We were worried. Traveling back down 101 to make the Friday Night Skate, the four lanes squeezed into two and the Golden Gate Bridge, though beautiful, was akin to molasses. We needed to make the ferry building at Pier One by 8:30, and the cut would be close.
So we got there, we found a 40-foot parking space (not so easy in downtown SF), strapped on the blades and jammed to what we thought was the meeting spot. But alas, the meeting spot was bare. Where were the hundreds of skaters? Had we missed them all? We started jamming towards the first resting spot, hoping to catch up. We asked passerbys if they had seen the herd of wheeled beasts plummet by yet. Answers included the very disappointing: "We haven't seen them for the last four weeks."
But we persisted, hanging onto the dental floss of hope that we had left. We had been telling Angel about this epic skate for months...it couldn't turn out cold! On the way to the last chance, we went through the film site of Nash Bridges, watched an unrecorded live episode of Candid Camera as fool after fool tried to rescue a tiny row boat washed up along the shore (each attempt resulting only in cold, wet, unsuccessful...yet valiant...attempts), and talked with two skaters who had met on the Friday Night Skate and now were engaged. But those two were the only other bladers in site, and the night, though clear and cloud-free, was looking like a rain-out.
Then, at the top of the hardest hill you have to climb, the skaters began to show. The word was that there were only about two dozens skaters, since the last few weeks had been rained out, but there were a few die-hards who were coming up behind. As we made it to the second resting stop, that two dozen had turned into over a hundred. Success!
We got back to the camper at midnight, and woke up this morning with a Farmer's Market living in the parking lot which had been vacant when we went to sleep. Crepes and coffee, apple cider and fresh flowers. A bountiful marketplace sprung up at our doorstep. Not a bad place to start the day.
