Golden Gate Bridge

It has been fifty years since I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, so a couple days ago I did it again. I mainly wanted to see if the toll booths had been taken down. I had heard that they weren't collecting tolls on the bridge any longer.

I had forgotten how tall the bridge's supporting towers are. They are impressive. The roadway seemed different. A little more narrow, perhaps. Did they take part of the roadway to create a sidewalk? 

I entered the bridge from the northern end. The last time I drove across the bridge, the toll booths were at the southern end of the bridge. I thought perhaps they would be gone, but the toll booths are still there. But now, they are devoid of employees. There is no one manning the booths. Signs read "Do Not Stop". The toll is still collected, but it is collected by an electronic mechanism rather than human tolltakers. Virginia uses those automated toll collectors, too. I guess the technology spreads fast. 

Crossing the Bridge, you can pay with FasTrak, License Plate account and one-time payment, or toll invoice. If you have two axles (a car) the toll is $8.75, License Plate and One-Time tolls are $9, and a Toll Invoice is $9.75. But if your vehicle has three or more axles, they sock it to you. A License Plate account or a One-Time payment are $27 for 3 axles, $36 for 4 axles, and so on.

I used to think that "Golden Gate" was the name of the bridge. But I learned long ago that "Golden Gate" is the name of the strait that connects San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean.

Full disclosure: I didn't travel to the West Coast. I visited the bridge electronically. I've driven from Virginia to California (and back) and I've traveled to California on business trips when I was younger, But this time I made the trip the easy way: I used Google Maps. You can go there, too, the same way.

Shower Chair

Because of my age and condition, my partner Nuria decided that I might fall down in the shower and therefore I needed a shower chair. In case you don't know this, you can buy a shower chair and sit in it while you bathe. So she bought a shower chair at Walmart. It came in pieces in a box.

We opened the box and took out bag after bag of parts. There were instructions on how to assemble the chair, but assembly required as much guesswork as reading the instructions. It took 30 minutes but we got it assembled. We took it to the bathroom and tried to fit it into the bathtub, but it wouldn't fit. It would fit sideways, but who takes a shower with the water coming at them from one side? Nobody.

We took the chair to the living room and disassembled it. Taking it apart took only half the time that putting it together required. We put the parts back into the plastic bags, but we had bags left over. We stuffed those into the box and taped it shut.

A day or two later, Nuria brought home another chair. This was just an outdoor folding chair that you might use to seat your friends around a BBQ pit and enjoy the warmth of the flames and the smell and taste of pit-cooked BBQ. We opened up the chair and put it in the bathtub facing the shower head. It fit perfectly. 

Now it remained to try it out. I had doubts, but I turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature and then sat down in the chair.

The warm water sprayed over me. I washed my hair and face, my chest and stomach, and my arms and legs. Nuria washed my back. It was like a massage combined with a warm shower. It was better than I could have ever guessed it would be. I've had a massage done by a professional masseuse and this felt better (though not nearly as long). I'm a believer now. 

What happened to the first shower chair? Walmart said they'd refund our purchase price but they didn't want the chair returned to them. It makes sense. They'd have to open the box, remove all the parts, make sure all the parts were present, repack the parts, and put them back into a new cardboard box. The cost of the labor for doing that was more than the profit they'd make on the chair. 

All in all, it was an interesting experience.

Alcohol

I've never been much of a drinker of alcohol. I used to hang out at an Applebee's bar, and sometimes I would have a beer, but usually it was just iced tea. 

However, in the past year, I've put the pedal to the metal and my consumption of vodka went through the roof. I'm an artist (writing is an art) and everyone knows artists are flawed -- especially the great ones. Look at van Gogh -- he cut off an ear. Artists are famous for drinking themselves to death. Hank Williams. John Bonham. Amy Winehouse. It's a long list, my friends.

My father was an alcoholic. His brother (my uncle) was an alcoholic. His brother's son (my nephew) was an alcoholic. I've no doubt that my family tree, especially on my father's side, is littered with alcoholics.

So I've been trying to cut back. I think I will have to stop completely. I'm okay with doing that. My father was a heavy drinker for many years, and then he stopped completely. But if he went to a party where alcohol was available, and if he was offered a drink, he would accept it. It's a social politeness, But he would never drink more than one or two drinks and he never resumed buying bourbon. But he did have an incentive to quit drinking: his doctor told him on several visits that if he (my dad) didn't quit drinking then he (my dad) would die soon. 

continued a day later... 

I too have an incentive. I've been drinking to get to sleep. My doctor refused to prescribe sleeping pills or even mild tranquilizers for me. So I turned to alcohol. However, I have to drink a lot more than I should in order to get to sleep.

Early Monday morning I got up to drink another shot so I could go back to sleep. But something went wrong and I fell down and hit my head on the floor. I think it knocked me out. Nuria found me but I was too heavy for her to get back into bed, so she called 911 and asked them what she should do. Fairly quickly the street in front of my house looked like a parking lot for emergency vehicles. There were two police cars, two fire trucks, and the paramedics in an ambulance. She said there were eight men in my bedroom trying to talk with me, but I was not responsive. So they took me to a hospital. I "woke up" in an ER room next to a nurse's station. I was there for about six hours before they released me.

I told Nuria that I wasn't going to drink any more alcohol and I meant it. Alcohol is not good for me. 

I had some debate about whether I should publish this blog. I felt like I shouldn't. Nuria encouraged me to publish it. She said there were millions of people like me and some of them may find my blog and benefit from reading about my experience. If you are one of them, you know that what happened to me can happen to you. Don't let it.