#45 - Walk Across the Golden Gate Bridge

I grew up just an hour or so away from the bridge and never had an opportunity to walk across it. When my friend Gary mentioned riding his bike across the bridge,  I knew I needed to finally go and walk across it, so I added it to my life list.

Now I can say "Done." Last Sunday Bob and I drove down to San Francisco and met up with friends and walked across the Golden Gate Bridge ... and back again.

We parked on the north side, walked south, enjoying some nice views to the City, took a little break and then walked back. It's pretty congested on the bridge, as pedestrians and cyclists both have to share the sidewalk on the eastern edge. The seismic retrofit, which happens to be a project of the company I work for, has shut down the sidewalks on the western side.

A few things surprised me about the experience. First, it was pretty overwhelming how loud it was on the bridge. Of course, there are cars whizzing by at 45+ mph, so it will be loud, but it just seemed so much louder than I expected. Honestly, I thought it was going to be kind of peaceful up there. Not.  Another surprising things was feeling the bridge deck bounce from passing cars... cool and weird. The other thing that I hadn't really thought about was how much would be going on in the water beneath the bridge. Here is a little of what we saw:

Dolphins!

Crazy kite surfers ... they went FAST!

We were fortunate to have sunny skies, but the wind was blowing pretty good. Overall, a fun trip and I was happy that the timing worked out so that Melyssa and Jeff were up from San Diego and Meghan and Aaron could drive up from the Penninsula.

Melyssa and I, holding on in the wind.

We came, we saw, we walked!

If you want to walk across the bridge, there are some good resources here at this link. It's about 1.7 miles each way, with a little incline on each end. If you don't want to walk it, you can rent a bike, and if you only want to walk one-way, going south is best, as you'll get nice City views. You can then catch the bus back over the bridge.