BAKER BEACH

I was visiting some friends that took me to Baker Beach in San Francisco, CA. It was a particularly beautiful day and took this photograph. It's hard to believe that the Golden Gate Bridge is the number one tourist attraction in the US for foreign visitors but apparently it is. In 1987 I had an opportunity to walk across the bridge....right down the middle! Me and about 250,000 other revelers attended the 50th anniversary of the opening of the bridge. I was caught just past the first tower and could not move. Parents held their children over their heads. One person fainted and had to be delivered to safety across the outstretched hands of other participants. It took quite a while for her to get to the south area of the bridge and safety. The designers of the bridge never allowed for the kind of weight that 250,000 people would present and the bridge actually flattened out at mid-span. A very catastrophic event could have killed thousands that day. Luckily only a few people were hurt by jostling crowds. I finally got to the other side and then walked back. I put my name on some of the Botts dots that mark the lanes.