Slow Movement
The Automotive Age can’t end soon enough for me. Not just because of the environmental damage, and not just because of the expense. (The Fabulous Wife and I drive well under 7,500 miles a year, yet even with safe-driver discounts we pay more for auto insurance than for utilities.) What truly exasperates me is the time lost in traffic.
If you drive over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with any frequency, you know what I mean. For years The Fabulous Wife and I, tired of perceptibly aging while crossing the Bay Bridge, instead took the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Marin County, turned south onto Highway 101, and went to SF via the Golden Gate. Though it was still a long ride, the indirect route got us there faster. After we retired, we switched our classical music concerts from Saturday nights to Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, figuring traffic over the Bay Bridge would be lighter.
We figured wrong. Even on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, it’s a rare exception when city-bound traffic over the Bay Bridge moves freely. Last Sunday afternoon we left for the Civic Center, twelve miles from our house, 80 minutes before concert time. If we averaged a paltry ten miles per hour, we’d arrive well before the orchestra tuned. But the toll plaza was a parking lot, the bridge didn’t look any better, and we were beyond any exit. “At this rate we’re not going to make it in time for the first piece,” I told The Fabulous Wife. Which was really disappointing, because the first piece was Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, the most welcoming work in his thorny oeuvre.
We might have missed the second piece too (Brahms’s violin concerto) had not tons of vehicles heading west with us gotten off at Treasure Island. Who knew TI was such a weekend destination? I hit the gas and wove with the insolence of a tech bro until we reached Davies Hall four minutes before concert time. I let The Fabulous Wife off so she’d be certain to hear the Stravinsky, then raced to park the car.
What followed was right out of an action movie — if the hero was an ectomorphic geezer who hadn’t thrown a punch in half a century — as I dashed past one shutting door after another. Mine was the next to last car into the parking garage, and I had to squeeze into a spot that wasn’t really a spot. Then I flew down the stairs to street level and crossed the busy intersection to the concert hall, where the usher made me close the door behind me before scanning my ticket. From there I took the steps two at a time up two long flights only to find the door to my section closed. Screw it! I yanked it open, and to my immense relief found the music hadn’t begun. The Fabulous Wife patted me on the thigh as I plopped into my seat and caught my breath.
I’d been more lucky than good. Esa-Pekka Salonen started the concert late.
Still, I was so happy I beat the odds that neither the horrendous ride nor the teen with Restless Body Syndrome sitting next to us distracted me from the magnificent music. So perhaps I doth protest too much; perhaps the obstacles to reaching one’s destination actually enhance the joy of arrival.
We would have taken BART, but The Fabulous Wife had knee surgery a couple of weeks ago, and though she’s ambulatory, she couldn’t have negotiated the dozens of stairs from the platform to the street and down again. (Especially down.) Could we have taken the station elevator? Sure — if it was working and we’d brought our hazmat suits. If you ever need me to confess to a crime I didn’t commit, lock me in a BART elevator. It won’t take long.
When we worked, going to the San Francisco Symphony was an affirmation: although we endured our jobs mainly to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, we also did them to enjoy some of the Bay Area’s outstanding cultural attractions. Now that we’re retired, we’re not as much in need of reminders that life is worth living. So we’re thinking of cutting back on the number of concerts we attend and switching exclusively to Sunday matinees, when it’s safe for never-were action heroes and their gimpy wives to ride BART. It’s not a perfect solution. But it will allow us to leave the damn car at home.
