gab goes, issue 1

a travel diary

I needed to see the Pacific before I left for two months, and I think my trip started then. Owen and I got up early and ate chocolate chip muffins and coffee. We walked to the streetcorner with the rental bikes and I struggled to unlock one with my phone, so he had to do it for me. I thought then about how for two months, with only a brief interlude in the middle in Philadelphia, I’d have to be in charge of unlocking my own ebike. It’s silly; until this point I’d never had to unlock an ebike.

We rode the wiggle to Golden Gate and then sailed down the hills to the ocean, weaving among joggers and strollers and in the glory of the saturday sun. We parked along the great highway and walked along the beach. Dogs bounded wildly in the wide cold surf. Their owners threw toys and sticks, or shouted. I wanted to take my shoes off, but I had a cut on my foot, so I put my hands in the sand instead.

We reached a bigger tidal pool near the cliffs that stretched all the way to the sea. It was green, and I said, “goo lagoon” in a French accent like the narrator from Spongebob. We said it back and forth to each other til I decided to jump the lagoon with a running start. My heel landed at the edge, splash, and Owen walked around to the narrowest part and stepped over.

There was a cave on the other side. It smelled like guano. We took two steps in before I said, no there are bats in there— I can’t afford to get a bat disease. Owen laughed at this idea but still we moved along. We reached the Sutro bath ruins and climbed around. A human-made pond with a view of the Pacific, glass green life. I crouched on one of the walls and watched tadpoles dart among the water grasses. Gatorade bottles and sticks and rocks. Ladders leading down into muck.

I left my sunglasses on when we walked through a rock tunnel. The light at the end promised a different perspective on the cliffs and the sea, but I couldn’t see the sand in front of me. I held onto Owen and we arrived at the end to see the view. He held my hand on the way back through.

We climbed up the cliffside along the trail, and walked back toward the camera obscura. We paid six dollars to be let into the little room, to see the reflection of the sea we’d just walked alongside on a white plaster bowl. Waves crested and broke. A dog darted, speed compounded by the flying spin of the camera. We explained how it works to another woman who stood there in the dark with us. I told her that artists use them to paint portraits, to see their representation as it coincides with the reflection. Back in the blinkering sunshine I lost the words for what the camera obscura is. An image? Only reflection? A doubling?

That’s how the trip started, even if it really started when I got on a plane three days later.