Trouble in San Francisco

Kara being the wonderful person she is drove out to us to pick J up so he could get started on procuring a temporary replacement to the PEACE car, not an easy task. After and hour long conversation about snow kiting with the tow truck driver, we reached J.s house ready for the NASCAR packing job. J quickly informed me that his dad decided based on his new years resolution of a healthier life style donated his car for the Yoga Slacker cause. The car is a 1990 Toyota coupe; a tiny car for a 4 week road trip, mobile production machine, and the price was right so let.s load up. It was lacking personality on the outside no spay paint, stickers, or glued on novelties.

We left again at 1:05am, 1845 miles in 32 hours, no worries. In the interest of insuring a nonstop adventure J implemented 5 Adventure Race Team Challenges that could be required at any time, which essentially meant that as soon as I got comfortable and went to sleep I would be awoken with a camera in my face and J yelling pick a number 1-5. I would answer full well knowing he had little idea what random task he would choose for us. Ah umm #3 ok we have 5 minutes from the time the car stops to get under the road and back to the car. Ok ok ok stop there is a bridge coming up. Where are my shoes ah screw it lets go! I grabbed the camera to document the cruel and unusual punishment implemented on me such as running through an ice filled ditch barefoot in a slightly comatose state. After returning to the car in a refreshed state of mind and cold feet I exclaimed about how random our life style was. On the road again we were mid way through Wyoming when we stopped 4 gas upon stepping out of the car it was immediately apparent that had we taken the VW or fates my have been greatly affected. The wind was a constant 40mph gusting to 65mph and if you have not had the joy of trying to control a VW in light winds it is concurrent to trying to carry a sheet of plywood in 30 mph winds. We latter learned that to young men traveling from California to Wyoming got blown off the road and were killed.

Time for Adventure Race challenge #3 we need to find a place to do 100 pull ups between the two of us in 5 minutes. Look that will work it is one of those big metal snow fences. When we got out there we found the bar to be much larger than anticipated. It was like a large open hand sloper of a hold. We started of strong each doing 10 then 8 then 5 then 3 we held 3 for the last 2 sets to reach our 100 pull ups in 5 min goal. Mission #3 accomplished. Our adrenalin was wearing off and the monotony of the road was setting in. We were moving from gas station to gas station changing drivers at every stop. I woke up to find Jason driving unusually slow not his normal 15mph below the speed limit. This time it was more like 50mph. I tried hard to see but my contacts were welded to the inside of my eyelids. So after minutes of incisive blinking my vision returned. And due to our misaligned headlight all I could see was white we had driven into a blinding snow storm. Jason drove for another hour and we made it 30 more miles down the road. We were never going to make San Fran at this rate. I took over driving discovering quickly that if the headlights were off our vision increased 10 fold. We just needed to be aware that with our headlights off we were invisible. Luckily it was 3am and there was not much traffic. So we increased our speed enough to get us back on schedule. I drove till the storm subsided.

J took over at about 5am. I had another rude awakening; G-forces driving me into the seat belt fowled followed by SMASH or rather slight bump. J hit the car in front of us because a van cut in front of them and then everyone stopped and we did not have anywhere to go. So after taking some pictures and exchanging insurance info we were on the road again. It was about 7am and we were in the middle of rush hour in the bay area. We had less than 20 miles to go, the traffic slowed to a stop as we approached the toll bridge. We eventually got to pay our dollar to drive onto the bridge. As the gate lifted 25 lanes of cars quickly tried to become 4 lanes. Cake appropriately playing in the background as J .muscled for rank. We made it quickly into the city, shortly after we located the conference location. Now it was time to find a parking space 1mile out 2miles 3..6miles out we finely located a street with no time limit on parking. We unlocked our bikes loaded our backpacks with our yoga mats, towels, sandals, and water bottle and about 9:40 we set out on our 6 mile ride back up and down the steeeeep hills of San Francisco. We locked our bikes to the railing outside the hotel and headed inside. We located the room where the meeting was, walking through the doors, after loosing a transmission, borrowing a car driving 2700 miles in 32 hours nonstop riding our bikes 6 miles, at 10:02am. Pretty good for not owning a watch, I.d say.

The end of the day came fast. We called up our good friends at Prana to see if they had any extra room. Kelley suggested we call DK. This ended up being quit the mix up with DK expecting to have his own room he was headed out on a date when we called him, after changing his plans he called us back, he seemed a bit bitter, we tried to thank him since the damage was done, we talked about the importance of communication in the future. We fell asleep to DK playing guitar. Morning came we woke up and headed for the car. The car looked strange from far away I was not sure what was different, my mind wondered, I drifted off beginning to day dream. when Jason exclaimed the bikes are gone. So they are, wow. Well we better take pictures for the insurance people. We have to be to work in 15 min lets go find a place to park. $15 dollars a day that is the cheapest I have seen sounds good compared to $39 per day at the hotel. Ok we have five minutes let.s run. Work went well because it is never work to us. We enjoy helping everyone out plus we get to meet cool people like the CEO of TRANGO. We got to see Krista, Kelley, DK, and Devaki their cool climber marketing girl. After work we got a quick yoga practice in then we headed for the hotel to grab the slackline. It was time for urban Slacklining. We had set up the slackline between two lamp posts within feet of the city traffic whizzing by us, talk about focus. We had a few passer-biers give it a try. We really enjoy spreading slackasana. The cops rolled by on the sidewalk but they did not say anything. Upon taking the advice of a spectator we headed for the tourist area to see if we could make any money slacking, we were after the experience not the money. But on the way we spotted a sweet spot to set a long line. After a few attempts at true slacklining that is walking on a slack chain fence, we set out to put up a 70 footer over concrete, sounds like a great idea right!!! Well after a few walks it was time for some poses. There was a semi-adventurous couple who thought it would be fun to hurdle the line, which was pretty entertaining. Jason pulled off a great looking warrior one with a wrist twisting exit.

We stopped at a Thai place to get some food; I had an amazing peanut sauce dish. We sat there talking until they close so we left them a pretty generous tip, abnormal for me but no sooner did I give $5 away I found $5 walking out the door. It was in a torn up bouquet of flowers. On the way back to the hotel we ran into a street professional. We got a pretty good video interview with him. He explained the intricacies of making a living off the streets. The ethics you follow and the importance of patience, persistence and overall politeness. If only everyone followed these rules. We got back just in time to have DK serenade us with his guitar. 3am rolled around and we finely fell asleep. J had it tough he was scheduled at 7am so he was up and gone by 6:20, I was woke up by my phone ringing at 6:45 saying that he could not find the car and I should locate it when I got up. It was Martin Luther King Day so we thought the parking would be free due to the holiday. J called again at 8am adamantly stating that I needed to get up and find the car, because he was not sure the parking was free and it may have been towed. I crawled out of bed, and I was off on my adventure to locate the car. I went to were I thought it was but no car, hum, ok let.s set up a grid search so I spent the next 3 hours walking UP, down and back UP way up the streets of San Francisco. During this intensive exhausting search I decided that if I was always going to have a digital camera with me I should take a picture of where we park the car. From now on that is my plan no more losing the car. I had to work at noon and it was getting close 11:30 and I found 3 locations where the car could have been, but no car. So I sprinted back to the conference as not to be late. I found J and gave him the # to the tow company on the sign that was at one of the 3 places the car could have been. J called and there was no record of the car, I of course did not believe him because he could not remember the plate # even though they said there were no cars from ND towed that day. We tried to recall the # but wait the bikes were stolen off the back of the car and we took pictures for the insurance company, sure enough there was the license plate number. So I called the insurance company back sure I was going to get different results with the new plate # but alas no car no car what does that mean no car, wow no car no bikes no car. OK so call the cops call your mom call your phone companies call your credit card companies. J had nothing he had everything in the car. I luckily had one bag in the hotel with the slack line, the little camera all the tapes, and some cloths. I think the updated total with both bikes was $12,000.00worth of gear lost, my wetsuit the biggest loss as I was in CA in January and my brand new never used wetsuit gone gone. So it was surfing in old wetsuit which is not fun my feet also froze. But the biggest most important problem was.You realize we are shooting our Yoga Slackers Video in less than a week and we just lost all our webbing and rigging. Luckily I always carry a line with me, huh. We should be able to shoot the whole video with one 60 foot line, right. Maybe Sean will have a line and Paul will have one too. This just means no high lines. I don.t like high lines anyway.

Next issue it is Monday afternoon Tad fly.s in Tuesday morning shit. Ok Sean flew out from the east coast 4 days ago into San Francisco. I called him up he was 6 hours away in the valley, with Louise ok can you come get us in SF. Sean said .sure, want to here a funny story about rental cars?. So Sean rented a fancy car in hopes of impressing a girl he has been in touch with but when he went to pick it up all they had were mini vans so Louise was ribbing him on his idea of a fancy car but turned out great 6-7 people with camera gear the mini van with a name I cant recall right now made the perfect mobile production vehicle. Our Yoga Journal Friend hooked us up with his hotel room. We thought that it would be good to go out with some friends Matt and Rich to eat and do some urban slacklining. We got up a little late we were 2 hours late picking Tad up not too bad all considering! If you want more you will have to wait for the Yoga Slacker documentary to come out.