In Which I Explore Treasure Island; and Go to the ER

When the pedestrian path on the Bay Bridge opened in September 2013, I was one of the first people to bike it. That day, I went all the way to the end and stared at the drop into space beyond, because they hadn't managed to get it to Yerba Buena Island, due to the old Bay Bridge being in the way.

By the time they finally completed the path, over three years later, I'd lost a lot of my enthusiasm for Biking the Bridge. That's partly because I was by then hiking more than biking, but also because Caltrans was playing stupid games with closing it down every other week throughout 2017. So, it was hard to schedule. (In fact, as far as I can tell, Caltrans is now still violating their agreement to keep the path open 24x7, which they agreed to after much pressure from pedestrian and bicycling groups, back before the new bridge opened.)

But this Friday, I had bonus weekend time, because I took the day off after a week and a half of unrelenting work. So I decided to bike out to Yerba Buena Island and Treasure Island at last.

---

I haven't biked the bridge in a long time. It's a challenge because it's a long uphill. And windy. And loud. But it's always rewarding to see the Bay opening up around you (though, sadly, they put the path on the wrong side of the bridge; you would have been able to see much more beautiful vistas on the north than on the south.)

I was quite pleased to pass the center of the actual suspension bridge, because that's about where the path ended before. Soon I was on a slight decline that pulled away from the bridge itself and dropped to Yerba Buena Island.

---

Yerba Buena Island, it turns out, is a mess.

There's nonetheless a nice little vista just to the left on Yerba Buena Island. Well, kinda nice. It's just a patio and a little lawn below, with lots of fences all around, partially blocking the views. But, there are some vistas. And benches at both levels. And water and a bathroom. So I sat there, ate the lunch I'd picked up from Togo's, and then did some writing. (I've gotten behind on my two histories per week that I should be working on to someday come out with my sequel to Designers & Dragons.)

But, there are also closed roads all over the Island and construction everywhere. And finally, there are still government-controlled areas that are closed off. The result is pretty ugly and makes it very hard to see anything or to get around the island.

The path from Yerba Buena Island to Treasure Island goes around the back side of the island (toward San Francisco). It had a little bit of uphill, but not too much. And, because of all the construction and closures, the traffic in the direction of Alcatraz Island from the pedestrian pathway is almost exclusively for bikes and pedestrians). So, it was a petty low-key trip out there and pretty safe. And then it was down, down, down to Treasure Island, which is an artificial island, and thus just barely above sea level.

---

Treasure Island, it turns out, is even more of a mess than Yerba Buena Island. A lot of the roads are partially or entirely closed. Surprisingly, there are still some people living on the island, and some businesses, but a lot more looks closed up, and there's a lot of construction too.

I enjoyed seeing the two sides of the Bay Bridge from below, and I appreciated exploring the time-lost streets (which reminded me of the abandoned houses in the north of Alameda island) and seeing the East Bay in the distance. But, I was underwhelmed until I got to the north edge of the island, (which turns out to be further away than I expected; it's a pretty long island). But you get toward the north edge, and there you find an entrance to the perimeter path, which goes all around the end of the island. From there you have beautiful views of Angel Island, Marin, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate, and of course San Francisco. Being out in the Bay, a lot of it feels very close-up as well. It made the trip entirely worthwhile.

---

Afterward I rode back up to Yerba Buena Island. That was the most challenging part of the ride, because I had to reclaim the 200 feet to get back to the Bay Bridge deck in a relatively short amount of time, but I managed it without either stopping or feeling like I was dying, so go me. However, it was still the least pleasant part of the ride because you have to play chicken with the eastbound entrance to the Bay Bridge. Yep, they really need to fix that.

---

So, I'm pleased that I got out to see the islands, but they're clearly very much a work-in-progress. They need to fix the wreck of roads on Yerba Buena, and Treasure Island needs to be put back together. But after that, it should be a pretty kick-ass destination.

Sometime long after we've left the Bay Area.

---

One amusing interlude Friday night: K. asked me to pick up dinner at Taco Bell after I got home. So I went to the Taco Bell a block away from campus and found it absolutely jammed with students, two or three times as busy as I've ever seen it before. Every table filled, every stool filled. There were backlogged by ten orders, which is entirely unknown there (but they still knocked the orders out blindingly fast; it's one of the best Taco Bells I've ever been to, and that's saying something).

I had no idea what was going on, so I just sat there puzzled at the time.

Turns out that a big 4/20 demonstration had just ended on campus, where the students all stood around in front of the "No Smoking" signs that fill campus ... and smoked (pot).

And the students were all really hungry afterward, for no apparent reason, so it was off to Taco Bell.

---

The ride on Friday was somewhere around 25 miles. Then today I hiked 14 miles, from Jewel Lake at the north side of Tilden, back home, along any number of Tilden trails and fire trails.

So, a busy and healthy two days. And I've managed to put eleven days of work and stress out of my head just a bit.

---

And then we spent Saturday evening at the ER, because K. had a bad fall on her scooter while I was up in the hills, and we were both concerned that she might have broken her thumb.

---

I was shocked to see that the Alta Bates ER now has a metal detector at their door. File that under reason #32,102 that I'm happy to be leaving the East Bay.

However, it's one of the most ineffective security setups I've ever seen. You just pass your bags around it, and they don't check them at all. So, you just put the guns in your bags, not in your pants.

---

As for the thumb: two sets of x-rays, one CAT scan, and six hours later, they decided it wasn't broken. After being pretty sure that it was.

Just badly bruised and maybe sprained.

K. now has an immobilized thumb to go with her broken foot.

In Which We See James and the Giant Peach

Today, we saw James and the Giant Peach at the Berkeley Playhouse.

Unfortunately, it was one of the most disappointing musicals that we've seen at the Playhouse, and almost certainly the one with the least ambition. There have been musicals that I didn't love because of stylistic disconnects (e.g., they were old and dated), but this was one that I found almost entirely superficial, in a way that even the Disney musicals aren't.

One problem was the plot, which is nonexistent. Almost nothing happens in the first act, until the giant peach rolls free of the tree and drops into the sea. And even the second act is just a meandering journey with very little actually going on. You could put all the major plot points on a postcard and have plenty of room for an actual letter.

The other major problem was the music, and that's of course how musicals live and die. A good song in a musical needs to (1) move along the plot; (2) reveal depths of the characters; (3) surprise the viewers with revelations about plot or character; and (4) provide subtext that makes the song's words about more than the obvious. The best songs in the best musicals simultaneously and constantly do all of these things. The Giant Peach songs? A few of them gave a tiny bit of character insight, and that was about it.

There were a few songs that I kind of liked, even though none were earworms. But even those were very pedestrian. Take a song about James losing his family (though I can't even figure out its name, looking at the song list, because they're all so generic). It was moving. I shed tears. But it also seemed super-cliched with messages like "when you find something it's never lost again" and "they'll always be there in your heart".

Generally, there was some good messaging, like: your family aren't family if they hurt you; and you choose your family; and if your family sucks you should cheer when they're killed by a giant peach; and we should appreciate everyone's diversity. But what a dull vehicle for those messages.

The only particularly lively thing of the musical was the various bugs in the peach, who only show up toward the end of Act I. That's when the show came alive as it ever was. Grasshopper and Spider were particularly good. Gloworm would have been if she'd gotten any attention. (She was even the one member of the Peach crew who didn't get a postscript.)

A few other good things:

• A great 30-second interlude at a chocolate factory where a snippet of the oompa-loompa song is sung.
  
• A hilarious/terrifying intro where James' parents are eaten by an angry rhino.
  
• A fun reveal about the nature of the narrator.
  

Meanwhile, the villains were over-the-top and awful. I particularly hated the depiction of the villain who was portrayed as overweight and constantly talking about how she wanted to eat something. It was cringe-worthy.

This was one of the very few Playhouse plays that I seriously considered leaving at intermission. But it had been such work getting up there with K's broken foot and damaged hand that it seemed like we should at least repay that investment. And the second half was better than the worst (first).

Skimming the Wikipedia article, I find that the musical didn't even make it to Broadway, due to mixed reviews. No surprise. More surprising that Berkeley Playhouse is lauding it as the "centerpiece" of their 10th anniversary season, and the sort of thing they created the Playhouse for. Which apparently means musicals for 5-6 year-old-ones, who would have probably loved it.