Thursday, April 17, 2008

the fog of commuting.

I had to go to San Francisco yesterday and this morning and as I've said before, it ain't no cake walk. Luckily yesterday I could leave at 9:00 and (supposedly) miss all the traffic. As luck would have it, I got some latent commuter hell about 10 miles out of SF. Just as I was about to have a little snit, the local AAA (read: doesn't play a bunch of mainstream crap) station KFOG was doing their "10 at 10" program where they play 10 songs from a given year. I like to try and guess what year and it's distracting for at least 5 minutes. So, I put it on KFOG and the Gin Blossoms "Hey Jealousy" is on. Nice. I always liked that song and I thought to myself, "man, this must be what, 1996? 97?" So I sat there listening and then...traffic stopped at a dead halt. grrr. then, "Hey Jealousy" ended and I heard the familiar piano strains of my go-to karaoke song, "Easy (Like Sunday Morning)" by the Commodores. "Wait a second," I said, "Gin Blossoms and Commodores were decades apart." Then it hit me...hard.

It was probably my ALL TIME favorite band FAITH NO MORE doing "Easy!!" Holy shit!! Not only does FNM rule all, their version of "Easy" is, well, easily one of if not the best cover song ever done. So, I was stoked as could be.

Then today I have a class and it's always a drag getting there. I leave the house between 6:30 and 7:00 and barely make it the 40 miles to SF for my 9:00 class. Today was no different but as I came out of the tunnel that leads to the Golden Gate Bridge, I looked right and saw what was most simply the coolest fog crawl I've seen in a while. I always get a happy/elated feeling when I approach SF, it's just gorgeous. But sometimes something catches my eye and makes me get all giddy. Well, that happened this morning.

OH! I should add, I was listening to a live Wilco CD and they were playing their outstanding live version of "Via Chicago" which has all these cacophonous sounds like a Chicago subway passing at different intervals in the song. As I approached the bridge, Wilco was just getting to the noisy part and the blue skies were being engulfed by fog. I couldn't get my iPhone camera going fast enough to capture the fog creeping down the hillside. It always reminds me of fuzzy mold. But I got it out in time to hit the bridge and here's the progression I saw...



This one below isn't a "bad" shot (per se), the entire tower is lost in fog



Tower 2...and if you could read my mind you'd hear me say, "Jeez, I wish I hadn't watched THE MIST last week..."





Pretty cool.