When I was doing plumbing, I used to hate to work in San Francisco. I didn't know "The City" as well as I knew other counties so I was constantly getting lost and it would take extra time to find the jobs and the suppliers. I could never find parking. When I could find parking, sometimes it was two blocks away and the job would then be on the fifth floor and I would spend half my time going back and forth to the van. Nobody else liked to work there either so I was inevitably overbooked and expected to work longer hours. It was always more complicated getting authorization to do the work because I could never tell how the building was owned. Codes were stricter, people were meaner, you know, the whole walnut.
So I was working there one day and feeling very sorry for myself for all those reasons plus I'm sure I was ticked off at the company for underpaying and maltreating me. I was low on gas and money because my bank didn't have any branches in the City and I wasn't even driving my own van, I had the company loaner van, because mine had broken down and was costing me a fortune to fix. I'm pretty sure the van had a three-speed shift on the column which is insanity for driving around the City. It was just a dark day.
I finally talked the dispatcher into letting me head home and got to the bridge around six or so in extremely heavy commute traffic as one would expect on the Golden Gate Bridge at six in the evening. I got on the bridge and just in front of the first tower my engine suddenly sputtered and tried to die. I know what an engine sounds like when it runs out of gas and this was what it was doing. I started pumping the gas peddle in a desperate attempt to run the engine on air alone and I glanced at the gas gauge and that's when I remembered that the junky loaner van had a broken gauge and was out of gas when the gauge said an eighth of a tank.
I have to confess that I got really upset. I was resigned to all the other stuff that was going on but this was like the final straw. No gas and no money, stuck on the bridge with 40,000 people beaming hate at me for costing them an hour longer commute home. Make no mistake about it, a stall on the bridge at that time of day could easily cause a backup all the way down Lombard to Van Ness and all the way through the Presidio and the tunnel to 19th Avenue. I was clearly about to be punished for some past bad deed.
I started swearing and cursing at my steering wheel and venting my frustration on the poor loaner van. I was just imagining the news helicopter aiming their camera at me and all the other plumbers laughing about Bill in the loaner van stuck on the Bridge at rush hour. I kept pumping the gas because the engine was miraculously still sputtering away on air alone but I kept yelling at my steering wheel too.
After a couple hundred feet or so I decided to stop yelling at the truck because pumping that gas pedal did seem to be keeping it lit and lurching clumsily forward and I didn't want to turn the tide of even that small bit of luck. Besides, I really needed to focus on pumping that peddle. I started working that peddle like I was riding a bicycle, checked my mirrors and then got on the two-way radio to call in for assistance, not that anybody would be able to do anything. I told them I was running out of gas on the Bridge and they basically just mumbled their condolences. There was really nothing anybody could do to help me.
The Golden Gate Bridge, as you might know, has a significant "hump" in the middle. Something about the engineering of the suspension system called for the deck of the bridge to be high in the middle and low on the ends. Depending on the amount of weight on the bridge and the temperature that day it flattens out a little or gets taller. This hump in the middle is probably about 20 feet higher than the ends so it was an uphill battle in the sputtering van.
Another couple of hundred feet later that engine was still responding to the gas spittle I was squeezing through that fuel line and was still lurching forward. I just kept on pumping and actually started thinking there was a chance I would reach the middle, maybe another quarter of a mile away. As I pumped and lurched, I looked around me. I was only doing a few miles an hour but because of traffic most of the rest of the lanes were only doing slightly faster than I was. Nevertheless, people were honking and I could feel the hate from those drivers that just gassed their car around me. Even if I made it to the middle, though, I knew there was no way to coast off the bridge. There was a deep low spot well before the first exit on the North side leading to the scenic overlook parking area.
I don't know what combination of laws of physics were working in my favor but I did actually almost manage to reach the middle of the bridge just as the engine finally failed to produce any more forward energy. I knew that was it and stopped pumping and threw the van into neutral at about three miles an hour. The deck of the Bridge being almost flat at the apex of the hump, the van managed to coast the last 50 feet or so and never did quite come to a standstill before starting down the other side. At that point I had about as much hope as the van had gas when I had passed the first tower.
Twenty feet of slope in three quarters of a mile is just enough to keep you moving forward, so there I sat, piloting a coasting, junky, loaner van and enduring the hate from all those other drivers who thought, rightly no doubt, that they deserved to be going several miles an hour faster than they were stuck doing behind me, and the hate from all those drivers in the other lanes who, no doubt thought they deserved to not have the drivers behind me squeezing into their lane. Inevitably, I came to the bottom of the hill. Right at the end of the bridge itself, the road starts sloping upwards again and turns to the left to conform to the cliffs on which they built that highway.
As I slowed to a stop I could see the first exit ramp on the North side of the Bridge just a couple of hundred feet in front of me. If my mind had been perfectly lucid, I might have thought to put the van in gear and use the starter motor to get me off the bridge but I didn't think of that at the time. I just put the van in park and put on the brake and started looking around. I could see a big diesel Golden Gate Transit District tow truck sitting in the parking lot of the scenic overlook but I didn't know what he'd be able to do to help me. It would take him an hour to reach me in his truck. The first car after I rolled to a stop then honked at me as they sped around into the empty lane in front of me.
Then I heard somebody yell, "Take your brake off". I looked back and the second guy behind me was some guy in a junky old pickup truck. Contrary to all common sense and all odds, the person right behind me had a front bumper appropriate for pushing another vehicle and was offering to give me a push. I popped the brake and put it in neutral just as he gently contacted my rear bumper and a minute later I was off the bridge and coasting up behind that big diesel tow truck. I jumped out to thank my new friend but he just waved and went on his merry way.
As I was turning to go back to my dead van, I saw the tow truck driver walking toward me. My new friend had saved him or one of his workmates from having to wade through that traffic and extract me from the middle of the bridge but I figure his job was over now that I wasn't stopping traffic any more. I figured he was just going to cuss me out for running out of gas on his bridge. Instead, he asked me if I was out of gas and told me he was authorized to give me a gallan of gas to get me on my way. Thirty seconds later he was pouring gas in the van.
As I drove away from the scenic overlook after thanking the tow truck guy, I was headed for the Sausalito branch of my bank and I guess I had a slight reconfiguration of my attitude. I thought back at how upset I had been when the van first started acting up. I thought about how much I had yelled and cursed at that poor steering wheel. I thought about all that hate I imagined I was psychicly receiving from the drivers around me. I thought about all my expectations of fear and humiliation and doom and gloom. I then thought about how this whole thing had really only delayed me about 10 minutes. I thought that probably only about a dozen cars had been disturbed enough to pull around me and even then only one or two had honked. I thought about my expectations of the people around me and how a couple of them had gone just a hair's breadth out of their way and had changed the entire nature of my experience.
This whole episode had started as a continuation and amplification of the mood I was in at the time and had escalated into a tremendous attitude storm but in the end it turned out to be an extremely valuable lesson acquired at an very cheap price.
bill February 14, 2007, at 02:40 PM CST
