The new visitor's area of the Golden Gate Bridge is awesome! The added some great features for the bridge's 75th birthday last year.
Hello to ALL.
Crossing the bridge in the misty fog.
I call this shot: "Contemplative Chow"
Sun rising through the fog.
We came across this couple who jut got engaged in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge! They had just popped champage. We took photo of and with them. So sweet to share their moment. Love always wins!
Oh look, as we get closer to the Marin side the sun is coming out.
Panorama from the Lookout Point
But looking across the bay, the city was shrouded in fog.
A whack of walkers.
SO happy to the at the half-way point of the walk: Mollie Stone's in Sausalito.
A long line of cool vintage cars crossing the bridge. Honk, honk!!
Sleepy San Francisco still blanketed in fog. Those sculptures on Crissy Field are growing on me...
Our new Sunday tradition is to head across the street to Off the Grid Picnic for a wee lunch. It is just getting into full swing by the time we finihs our walks. Makes for an awesome way to relax after our intense training. We bring chairs and picnic blankets to hang out for a little while. There are close to 20 food trucks to choose from - this week I opted for totopos from Nopalito and a Bloody Mary! Delish!!
TODAY'S MAP QUOTES
Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out. Katherine Dunham
Nothing
in life is trivial. Life is whole wherever and whenever we touch it, and one
moment or event is not less sacred than another. You've got to really look
after it and nurture it. Vimala Thakar
WEEKLY INSPIRATION
Two years ago, Ernest Gagnon weighed 570 pounds. The 30-year-old lived in self-imposed exile in his Massachusetts apartment, leaving only to go to work and to the grocery store. He was depressed, lonely and suffering from crippling anxiety. A lesson is starting where you are and going beyond self-imposed limitations.
Instead Of Surgery, Man Pedals Off The Pounds
A lot of Americans are struggling to lose a whole lot of weight, and they try all kinds of crazy things.
Ernest Gagnon — a man from Billerica, Mass. — decided to shed pounds by getting into the often intense, high-adrenaline sport of cyclocross: racing road bikes on obstacle courses.
Two years ago, Gagnon tipped the scales at 570 pounds. He was depressed and embarrassed to leave the house.
"Being as big as I was, I really felt like I didn't belong anywhere," Gagnon says. "I was stuck in my house for almost 10 years, just going to my work and back."
Back then, Gagnon's diabetes was getting more serious. He was losing the circulation to his legs, and his doctors were talking about gastric bypass surgery.
Then, some sort of a switch flipped in his head and Gagnon decided he was going to race bikes, something he'd wanted to do since he was a kid.
Gagnon contacted Cosmo Catalano, a cyclist from Hartford, Conn., on Facebook, and asked if he wanted to go for a bike ride.
"He's like ... 'by the way, I ride kind of slow ... I'm 500 whatever pounds,' " Catalano says. "I [said] ... 'OK, I can deal with that.' "
This is how hundreds of New England cyclocross racers met Gagnon.
The First Race
Now, just two years after making that decision, Gagnon met up with his bike racer buddies in Lancaster, Mass., to do his very first race, called the Midnight Ride of Cyclocross.
These days, at age 33, Gagnon is 240 pounds slimmer. He is still very big by any standard, but a lot less so. Seeing him, surrounded by svelte, Lycra-clad athletes, squeezed into some spandex of his own, is a little bit jarring at first.
"You know, I'm riding in spandex in Boston with these guys. Never thought I could do that [and] it's liberating in a way," Gagnon says. "It really [forces] you to be honest with yourself, accept who you are; because if you can't accept who you are, you can't do anything."As you watch him, however, you start to get used to the big guy in bike shorts, especially when you realize that Gagnon himself is way past being self-conscious.
Before the race, Gagnon goes for a ride around the course with his lieutenant, Catalano, who gives him tips about how to ride it. Gagnon rides along on a custom-built titanium bike that is reinforced to hold his weight.
After checking out the course, he lines up in at the start in a crowd of 60 other racers, and after a few nervous, final moments the race is off.
The racers hurtle along dirt paths, and through soccer fields on bikes designed for racing on pavement. There are obstacles in the course like barriers that they have to jump over, or steep hills they run up with the bikes on their shoulders.
The slender, athletic racers are panting and working hard. For Gagnon, however, it's actually physically dangerous. He has angina, and his doctor told him not to let his heart rate get too high during the race, or he could end up in the hospital; something that has happened before.
Everybody at the race knows about Gagnon, and throughout the race the announcer gives little updates on his progress.
"Two laps to go for Ernest Gagnon," the announcer says, "nicely done Ernest — hang in there!"
After 40 minutes, Gagnon finishes dead last. Catalano and friend Steve Lachance quickly join him near the finish line.
"I told you you could do it, I told you you could do it!" Lachance says.
A steady stream of folks Gagnon barely knows, some of the 5,500 Facebook friends who have sought him out after hearing about his story, come by to congratulate him.
Gagnon says there isn't a weight goal he's aiming for; he just wants to be healthy. He's already eying a couple more cyclocross races to do later this year.
