Portal to Freedom
The saturday 8am bike ride with the boys was in jeopardy. The rains that had not come all winter were finally coming. Early weather forecasts showed that it should start raining in Fremont at 7am and keep raining all day long. Say it ain\’t so! If you know weather predicting you know that it is not an exact science, so the night before we agreed to go if it looked like the rain would hold off. Up saturday and check the hi-def doppler. Its already raining hard in the north bay and the storm is slowly heading southeast (our way). Looking outside it was windy as hell and cloudy out, but not the rain cloud type cloud. The ride was on!
As I was walking out the door I told Barb to be prepared to come rescue us if we get caught in a downpour. Hooked up with Downing at the courthouse (Starbucks) and headed out. Vandy was no-show today because he was refereeing Hawaiin League football in the rain at Hayward High. Surprisingly there were a lot of people on the trail. I guess they were all trying to beat the rain. We sure did. We ended up doing our normal 23 miles with hardly a drop hitting us. Out to Coyote Hills. UP heart attack hill. No coasting compitetion because people got in the way on the downhill. Could have been a record coasting day with that wicked tail wind. Oh well. Then it was out to the levy road to the bus stop.
Now we have been taking breaks out at the bend in the levy road for years. I can\’t think of a nicer place thats a mere 5 miles from my front door. When we first started riding our here, there was a makeshift bench that someone made out of a plank of wood and a few blocks of wood that had drifted up during a high tide. We sort of claimed squatter\’s rights and gave the place a little creek trail riders flare. John started the whole thing by customizing the bench. The rock pile what we were building (at low tide) would someday rise above the water line at high tide. We collected cool pieces of wood and rock and made this little corner of the world our own. And for over a year now, the American flag has flown. We put old glory up over a year ago, and changed it out when the wind and elements tore it to shreds. It flies from a pole that we strapped to an old piece of a scuttled boat engine. It flies above the highest of tides. Its cool!
In the last couple of months we put up some driftwood and when looking at the flag through it, looks pretty cool. Old glory nicely framed in driftwood. I started to call it the \”portal to freedom\”. Well, some vandals have other Ideas and occasionally tear down our driftwood masterpieces. We just build them back up! Thankfully, no one has messed with the flag, else there would be trouble. BIG trouble. Sometime this week, someone yet again vandalized our artwork, and we built it up again. Only this time better! I really like to look at the flag through the portal. It looks cool and makes me proud to be an American! We have seen people stop and take pictures just like I do. I\’ve seen similar pictures when doing a #coyotehills search on instagram.
The portal to freedom had special meaning yesterday. On the way home, we were making our way on the creek trail towards the Alvarado overpass, when we spotted a HUGE group of people running in formation, calling and shouting out cadence and carrying American and Marine Corp flags. All in honor of a young Marine who was killed by a drunk driver last week right up the street from where we live. Rest in Peace Lance Corperal Andrew Silva. I\’ll think of you next time we out at the portal to freedom
