Hoppers Hands: Saying goodbye to San Francisco

It could be my last run here; I went out for a run today, just a few days before we leave San Francisco, to go and pay homage to "Hoppers Hands". It's what runners do. But today was more significant than just a run. Today was pivotal. My injury is fading into the distance and rehab is my main focus now. Every day I'm pushing, pushing, pushing. Powered by painkillers and accompanied by winces and grimaces, I'm trying to regain fitness and strength. I can't go at it like a bull in a china shop though, or I'll end up injured and I'll have to back off. So it's a balance: push hard enough to make it count, but not so hard as to make it break down. Pain is a decent controller, but isn't everything. I can do rowing at a decent rate now, but I can't pull a flexibility band (those big rubber band thingies with handles on that nobody uses). I can do a bicep curl with 15 pound dumbells but I can't push a shoulder press through thin air! I'm not sure what other gym-goers are thinking as I happily do the bicep curl while watching the TV, then grunt, groan and grimace my way through an arm movement with no strings (or weights) attached!

There's nothing like taking something away to make you love it even more, and my running has been taken away until recently. My collarbone is fixing nicely, but aches a lot particularly after any jarring, so running was difficult. I couldn't do any at all for about 4 weeks - 2 weeks before and then 2 weeks after the surgery. I had to delay the surgery so I could come back to the UK in July, so there was some collatoral damage involved in the surgery and that gave me a lot of bruising and trouble with ligaments and other similar bits. 2 weeks after the surgery I got the OK to start training again and went straight onto the treadmill the same day. 15 minutes at 9 minute per mile pace had me in serious
trouble. It was difficult to see how I would ever be an athlete again. A couple of days ago, though, and I achieved a target I had set, of doing a 10K on the San Francisco Giants (the baseball team) sports day. It hurt a lot, the pace was slow, but I did it. The reaction wasn't too bad, and I got the confidence to do another - slightly longer run - today. Thinking I might not be running here again, I thought "I've just got to do Hoppers Hands". The last time I did Hoppers Hands was when I went out with the Golden Gate Run Club, so it seemed appropriate. Hoppers Hands are down by the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. All runners go up to the fence, do a high-five or fist-bump (I've learned to do both while I've been over here but don't for God's sake tell Chris) and off they go. There's been a fair bit of mystery about Hoppers Hands over the years, but that's mostly been b**locks. There is no mystery, Hopper's Hands are a copy of the hands of - yes, you've guessed it - a guy called Hopper. Ken Hopper. He was a bridge worker for a good many years, and used to see runners come up to the fence, touch it, and turn round. We've all done it: the "out and back". Here, I've been doing a run to AT&T Park (Home of the San Francisco Giants) and back. All the way there, touch the statue to a player that I can never remember the name of despite touching it a thousand times, and back again.
Go in the other direction along The Embarcadero, and if you go far enough - about 4 miles from my
 apartment here (yes Chris, I know its a flat not an apartment!) - you get to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's an interesting spot. You are at Fort Point, the old, original fort built way before the bridge back in 1850, to safeguard all this area (look at a map - there is no better strategic point for a fort) and you are at the foot of the bridge so you really do get a fabulous perspective of the scale of the thing. This makes it a natural destination for an out and back run, and that's what Ken used to see a lot of. There's a wire fence that stops you going round any further, along the rocks and under the bridge itself. Touch the wire fence and turn back. Ken would watch it and think: "what a shame they don't have something to mark it" and so he put up a pair of wooden hands for the runners to touch. He didn't think of them as "Hoppers Hands" - they were just a marker. Anyway, it all got very popular and one of his workmates put up a sign saying "Hoppers Hands" and later still, they actually traced round Ken's hands for the wooden version.

So my run was good, I felt OK, and I was enjoying every single second of it. I felt privileged to be able to do it; I certainly felt lucky. The accident might have taken me out of action for a few weeks but here I am. Back, and hungry for more. I gazed out at Alcatraz, and thought of my swim from there; I gazed at the city with the Transamerica building dominating the skyline and thought of all my work here; I gazed at Crissy Fields and thought of all the pioneering flights done from here; I gazed at the Pacific Ocean and the windsurfers, kayakers, and kiteboarders all out there enjoying themselves. It all felt very special. I'm not sad to be leaving, I'm looking forward to coming home, but it has been great here, and we've done so much. As I got to the bridge I looked up at the vast span 300 feet up, and felt in awe of its size and scale. I imagined what it must have been like working on it. A small number of men died making it (about 10 I think), which for a project of its size and ambition really is small. But a larger number of men became members of a very exclusive club called the "Halfway to Hell" club. The "Halfway to Hell" club was for those that had fallen but were captured by the safety netting and survived.

I gave the hands a high-five, and set off for home feeling very, very happy with life. By the way, did I mention that Ken Hopper had talked over 30 suicide attempts down off the bridge? Special guy, our Ken.