Phone
Saturday, September 29, 2018. I woke up around 6am which, given general insomnia at the time, felt like sleeping in. Jenya was out of town for the week, and I had no solid plans for the day except I wanted to go hike somewhere. Before getting out of bed I took my usual "internet bath" i.e. quickly scanning all the news and social media sites on my phone. But I then reflexively also opened Slack (which hosts most of my work related communication). Andrew, the Breakthrough Listen project director, had sent me a direct Slack message asking me to call him once I was awake.
After washing up I gave him a ring. He asked me to help put out a small public relations fire which involved making a data set available on the web. This required an hour of effort wrangling a bunch of files and transferring them to the appropriate servers and updating various databases and HTML files. Fair enough - it's all part of the job. But after breakfast and coffee I hastily packed up my hiking gear lest Andrew called again demanding other stuff. And predictably he did, but this time I answered and said, "I'm literally running out the door," and then ran out the door. Phew. Narrow escape.
I jumped into the 4runner and hit the highway. With no exact plan I aimed for Point Reyes. I've been to the car-accessible border areas of the park many times, but never really explored the longer internal trails. Surprisingly I dealt with no traffic getting there, but maybe that was because it started to rain a little bit and smarter people chose to stay home. I guess I should have checked the weather.
The drizzle let up momentarily as I got to the parking lot and scanned some maps. I set forth on the Mt. Wittenberg trail without much ado. I did pass a few humans as I climbed upward, but as I approached the crest I took a separate trail to the peak and found myself quite alone. Just me, trees, fog, and mud.
At the top the trail opened up to a small field with Blair Witch-y piles of rocks. Any view up here was completely obscured by foliage and clouds. I did meander down an unofficial trail that I hoped continued to a lookout point, but after a hundred yards I worried I might suddenly fall off a hidden cliff so I doubled back.
Upon returning to that clearing I heard a branch break in the woods. Was there a large critter hiding in the trees watching me? A deer? A mountain lion? A bear?! A serial killer?!! Only then I started to realize in my haste to avoid being continually pinged by work over the weekend I hadn't told anybody where I was going today. I looked at my phone - no service, obviously. Being completely unreachable and alone in an unknown and potentially dangerous location felt freeing - this is how I spent a lot of my youth and I always survived just fine. But at the moment I also felt quite vulnerable and irresponsible.
I briskly returned to the main trail and continued, as per my original plan hastily formed in the parking lot, down the Sky View trail to the coast. I checked my phone again. Still no signal. Also the increasing precipitation and humidity steamed up the screen and rendered it pretty much unusable. I tried to wipe it off with a sleeve, but my shirt was too damp to make a difference. I noticed that my whole jacket was already pretty soaked. The front of my pants were also drenched. However, given I was walking forward into the rain my ass was still dry. I put the phone in my back pocket.
This trail went on for miles and was basically a rain forest. The path itself was a river flowing downward past my boots at points. I encountered a couple other humans coming the other way during this long stretch, and we looked at each other like, "what the fuck are you also doing here you crazy idiot?"
Every quarter mile I twisted to glance toward my own butt. The darker areas of moisture on my pants slowly encroached toward the pocket containing the phone. The rains increased, along with my pace. With a mile left to go that one pocket was the only dry part of my person. "Hang in there, phone! We're almost to the coast!"
We made it. And the reward was glorious. Once out of the trees the rains stopped. The sun peeked out between the clouds and I dried off a bit. I had a mile stretch of wild, coastal California all to myself. The phone survived, but still no service.
I took the four mile Bear Valley trail back to my parked car. Like a junkie I checked to see if I had any bars every few minutes. And finally, once I did have service again I found... nobody had tried to contact me during all the above. I felt a bit foolish about my phone addiction, my worries, and my overmagnified importance.
Headed home, and took an epsom salt bath to soothe my ancient joints after that ten mile adventure. For dinner I treated myself to Trueburger instead of cooking. I drove on over, and happily ate my burger and fries at a counter facing the sidewalk. Unlike the old days when eating alone felt impossibly awkward, I now had a phone to stare at and look occupied. Somehow that's more socially acceptable. But then I sipped on some iced tea and it went down the wrong pipe. I coughed uncontrollably for a minute or two. How embarrassing. No phone could save me there.
At the house I got word from my friend Mark from LA was in town visiting his brother in Berkeley and they were fixing to do some karaoke. We ended up meeting at Nick's Lounge. None of us had ever been there and several large groups of regulars rightfully had priority - we waited over an hour to get our one turn at the mic. Mark did Prince's "Cream" - I panicked when it came time to choosing and ended up selecting "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" by the Smiths. It's fine to scream out really out-of-tune high tenor notes at home, but in crowded public spaces I played it safe by staying comfortably within my natural range, and Morrissey's whiny baritone easily fit that bill.
His brother split around last call, but Mark and I hung out till closing time, and then - with nowhere else to go at 2am - stood on the sidewalk outside the bar for a while talking about Twin Peaks as patrons continued to spill out into the Berkeley night air. Suddenly a young lady abruptly approached and keenly joined our conversation, asking many questions to stay as involved as possible despite knowing nothing about the topic at hand.
This seemed odd to me until I realized she was alone and waiting for a Lyft to arrive. Clearly Mark and I were the most sane looking people to mingle with lest one of the many weirdos still limping out of the Lounge, or already lurking on the street, start to hassle her. I thought it funny, or maybe sad, how earlier I felt like I was in a tight spot alone on a hill, nobody knew where I was, and my phone had no signal. And here she was, possibly feeling uncomfortable in a very public location, surrounded by all kinds of people, with active phone in hand advertising her coordinates. It's all very situational, isn't it?
We happily let her to hang within our safety zone until her car appeared and she unceremoniously zipped right off as quickly as possible, which was understandable and fair. I drove Mark back to his brother's place, and was in bed myself by 3am. Long day!