Two weeks off and I feel like I accomplished very little. I go back to work for the large orange bridge tomorrow. I'm sure I'll enjoy being back in SF. I'll be out from under the pall of smoke that has hung over SoCo for weeks. It won't be as hot in SF. I'll be back to a few old favorite haunts. The trouble is I'll also be back to work. Sob...And yes... I do know that I'm lucky to have a job in this economy. Yes it's a damn good job and I shouldn't complain. I also know that it's work and that it's Adam's curse and I'm tired of it. You won't be hearing much from me in the foreseeable future.
7 comments:
Hey, Jon. It's Adam's curse, alright, but keep on keeping on.
Don't steer clear of the blog for too long. You owe it to yourself. Besides, it wouldn't be the same without you, man.
No prob, really. I'm just depressed about it today. I had a fairly boring vacation and I won't get another one until next year. There might be good ukulele news later this week. I'm looking forward to checking that out. PS it really is a good job. Let me feel the wheels turning and there's a good chance I'll perk up.
ALL vacations tend to be boring, in my experience. Without Rosa and the kids to entertain, I would be picking lint out my navel given the opportunity. God knows, I've done it in the past.
That's about ten jumpers per year that choose the Gate as the place to burn their flag. And there must be a good number more who are talked out of the jump.
According to my local coroner's office most successful suicides on the west coast of Canada are hangings. The Patullo Bridge is thought to be the most popular span to jump from but I have found no statistics to support this. Me and my buddies used to watch the cops talk jumpers down from the Patullo with binoculars when I lived in a place with a view. Never did see anyone jump.
Around here, if someone is threatening to jump during heavy traffic periods, commuters used to cheer them on. A law was passed banning such cheerleading.
I was friends with the night shift sergeant who talked to jumpers. He had a bunch of horrible stories to tell along with a few success stories. He saw a guy throw his kid over the side before jumping himself. I would ask him if any of that shit bothered him and he would say,"No, no, why would a thing like that bother me?" Then he'd go home and have another heart attack. He'd had about six of them by the time he retired. He finally died last year. He was an old Marine Corps alcoholic from Kentucky.
The movie "The Bridge" is a documentary about people jumping off the bridge. I've never seen it. A guy that I got hired with and worked with for many years is shown jumping. We weren't close friends, but I knew him for years. He complained more than any other human being I've ever known.
I'm working on the positivity shit right now.
When someone is getting ready to jump, they close the outside lane on the bridge. During off hours that's a small inconvenience. When it happens at rush hour it can back traffic up for hours. Recently, while sitting in traffic an hour late I found myself wondering why someone didn't just push the motherfucker off and get it over with. What was his suffering compared to mine? No wait we're all suffering together thousands of us! What is his suffering compared to ours? Now it's getting good to me.
Actually, when I'm late in the evening it pushes me into all kinds of cool golden hour money. I think that jumper got me 40 minutes at double time and a half.
I've saved a couple of lives. When I worked late at night I used to get the odd shivering meth ruined drunk asking me if I would just drop them off at the foot of the bridge, they could take care of themselves after that. I would lie and claim that the stop was closed after midnight and I couldn't drop them there.
A few years ago they finally had the good sense to close the pedestrian walkways at night. Disappointed a few tourists, but periodically we have to remind tourists that the cable cars are not "the trolley ride" and the bridge was not built to be a scenic attraction.
Friend of friend story: cop managed the scene of a teenage suicide by hanging. It was not his first such similar scene to manage. There had been many more. His uniform only had to be dry cleaned once more. He too went for the hemp solution.
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