Schrodinger day over the Bay

Boys with Golden Gate Bridge.

I got new t-shirt today which has a picture of a cat on it which is just not generally my sort of thing. However, the caption is: “Wanted dead & alive – Schrodingers cat”. Anyone aware of my perpetual struggles to begin to grasp quantum physics will immediately understand why I had to have the t-shirt.

The other thread that this post is about to weave together is a post from a blogger we sometimes read. I’m not going to link to them because I only read them in the way you slow down to watch a car crash while driving on the highway; a morbid fascination, rather than something you’d recommend to others. Anyway, this blogger wrote a post about how travel bloggers only ever write about the good stuff, not the grotty, real, ugly bits in between.

Now I’m sure you’re beginning to see where I’m going with this: A day that could be great or could be bad depending on how closely you observe it; or until you write about it any day is both good and bad.

On the Bridge.

Today we made our way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and hired bikes. We then rode nine miles along the Bay and over the Golden Gate Bridge. There is a bike path from most of the way and it’s a glorious ride with lovely, iconic views out to Alcatraz and over to the Bridge. Riding over the Bridge itself was very similar to the way it used to be riding over the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, before they put up the security fencing all over the place.

The other side of the Bridge was a little scarier riding as you were on road and zooming downhill. The downhill part was fun as an adult but the combination of real downhill speeds and cars made for high parental blood pressure. We ended up in Sausalito which is a cute little township filled with tourist shops. Our inevitable favourite was the quirky shop filled with TinTin stuff, geeky t-shirts and assorted weird items that defy easy description.

Bikes on the ferry home.

We caught the ferry back from Sausalito together with several hundred other cyclists. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bikes in one place outside of a triathlon.

So that was a pretty cool day. But to return to the Schrodinger / travel blogger angle here’s some of the stuff I didn’t, and normally wouldn’t, mention. It was freezing cold coming home, we had tears from Declan when he had to complete his schoolwork, Jennifer and I growled at each other over some mixed up map directions, Callum completely over-reacted when Declan cut him off on his bike, the bus ride home was interminable. I could go on.

So there’s some validity to the idea that you tend to only write about the good stuff and every day becomes a great day because that’s what you observe by setting it down in words. But, hey, we’re on holiday and from that relative viewpoint every day is a great day. Honestly when you’re spending your life wandering about on perpetual holiday I find it hard to complain about a little grit on that way – and so while there are always less than perfect bits on the way, they just don’t seem very important in the grand scheme and are really not worth obsessing over.

And that, dear reader, is why quantum ideas do not scale up to the real world and why the real world does not scale up to the travelling world. In the world of a long-term holiday, whenever you open the box the cat is alive, sitting back in a deckchair, sipping a margarita and contemplating the sun setting gently over the ocean. And that’s the image I’m going to have whenever I wear my new t-shirt.

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