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The traffic was bumper to bumper. Plenty of people were able to look into our eyes and were glad they could afford a car. But we made it! Sure it was uphill as we crossed but we had beaten the incline, the 1/2 mile vertical snake, "going to Europe with Ralf and Earl in a Buick", and the humiliation of walking our bikes while 6yr olds and their grandparents whizzed past us.

It was foggy but you could still see how far we had come and tiny boats skimming along beneath us. This was not our fist time out on "the bridge" the last time we vacationed in San Francisco, Katie was 5 and Sarah was 7. It was at the end of our stay and we had not been on the bridge yet so we headed over, it was about 8:30pm and foggy. We walked to the middle. Sarah was petty scared, she was always afraid of heights. It started to drizzle, by the time we got half way it was full on rain. Did I mention it was windy? It all left quite an impression on them for years. Now we were making new memories.

Once on the other side of the bridge you are dumped into a parking lot. There we all posed for triumphant pictures with he bridge in the background. There are 3 ways out of the parking lot, back the way we came, a path that wend down under the bridge (which looked like no one could ever return) or up to the end of the parking lot and up the street beyond that. There were no signs but the little bags attached to our handlebars emblazoned with the "Blazing Saddles" logo marked us as clueless tourists. A fellow cycler (without the badge of shame) saw our bewildered sun burned faces and said "Sausalito is that way" pointing up the hill. So much for the "downhill all the way to Sausalito"!

The bike path was a distant memory what we had now was a foot and a half of macadam then weeds, rocks and precipitous drop offs. And those people who were bumper to bumper on the bridge? They will really anxious to get moving, they flew by us. There was no taking in the sites, we were in survival mode. Just as our decent picked up serious speed and errant shift caused my chain to come off. Disabled on the side of the road I waved the rest of our coterie on without me - "save yourself"

After wrestling mightily with the greasy serpent a good Samaritan stopped to give me a hand. The same thing had happened to his wife a mile back. After trying to clean my hands with dirt (how ridiculous is that?) and weeds I hop on and continue the plummet down to the quaint berg.