The Kitchen Table

Ben Davis has more energy than you do, and now he’s asked if you want to climb the cables of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  You do, of course.  Maybe.

Ben can actually do this because he’s the one who conceived of the Bay Lights – the 1.8 mile installation of 25,000 LEDs on the cables of the bridge that blink in never-repeating patterns through the mist of San Francisco Bay.  The project took years of exhausting fund-raising (eight million dollars, about a tenth the price the whole bridge cost), consultations with light artist Leo Villareal, meetings with engineers, meetings with government agencies, meetings with community groups, meetings with prospective donors, 100,000 feet of wire, and frightening episodes of nighttime installation.  The result is documented in “Impossible Light,” a film by Jeremy Ambers that describes the whole hairy process.

Ben proudly points out that the money was raised from individual donors.  “We talked to Audi and they were ready to make a significant gift,” he said.  “But at the last minute, they asked for naming rights.  This was NOT going to be the Audi Bay Lights project, believe me.”

On the day of the ascent, Ben met with six of us at the bridge’s paint garage.  He’s an in-shape, stubbly, sunny presence with big gentle eyes.  We were on a “lighting check.” The trip was cancelled a couple times due to wind and rain, but today was clear and still with high clouds and you could feel everyone thinking, “Uh-oh.  Here goes nothing.”

The “Bay Bridge,” as it’s called in San Francisco, was opened in 1936, a year before the Golden Gate Bridge.  Its western span is actually two bridges in sequence from San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, then a third bridge stretches from the island to Oakland.  The two suspension bridges west of the island are anchored together in the middle by a massive anchorage “with more concrete in it than the Empire State Building,” Ben said.  At its highest point, the bridge is taller than the Sydney Harbor Bridge, a bit shorter than the George Washington, and more than 200 feet shorter than the Golden Gate. (The vast majority of the world’s tallest bridges are in China these days.)

We were climbing the westernmost tower.  The cables we would traverse are about two and a half feet in diameter, actually made out of lots of smaller cables bundled together.  They are flanked on each side by a stiff handrail cable less than an inch in diameter.  In between them and all around you is a glorious, breathsucking expanse of crystal clear air. Ben showed us how to strap into the harnesses and caribiner clips that would secure us to the handrails.  We put on our hardhats, drove to the middle of the bridge, and stepped out into the deafening morning traffic.   “We have to climb a ladder to the upper deck, where we’ll get on the big cable,” Ben yelled to us – it is a double decked bridge.  It was hard not to look down and notice the laughably small sailboats 250 feet below.

Standing on the cable for the first time, we looked up to the tower 525 feet above San Francisco Bay.  The cable hangs in a curve many people call a parabola, but it’s technically a “catenary” or cosine hyperbolic curve, the kind a hanging chain makes.  At the top, it was clear, it would get quite steep.  It was hard not to wonder if that would be okay.

It is fifteen very carefully placed footsteps from one way station to the next up the big cable.  At the way stations, you are forced to remove the carabiners and reclip them on the other side of the vertical cables that steady the handrails.  This sounds chilling, but it’s actually a relief, forcing you to focus on things very close by, before returning to the realization that you are suspended in mid-air in a state from which you are accustomed to waking up in a cold sweat.

After a few hundred steps, the traffic below receded to a low hum and a gentle wind took over.  Ben was climbing right behind us, describing the technical aspects of what he called “the sheer physicality” of the bridge.  It was hard to focus on what he was saying, but yes, the bridge was big.

Section by section, we made our way to the top of the cable.  No one mentioned that it would swing in the wind and shudder at the passing of a truck below.  The bridge is a living, shrugging thing.  At the top of the cable, we unhooked for an unnerving moment and climbed through a porthole into the tower’s walkway.  It’s a two-story affair, and there were men in white suits painting it all diligently.  How often are they up here?  “We usually walk up twice a day,” one said.  “It’s nice to go down for lunch.”

At the top, the desire to return to the ground fought openly with the fear of the descent.  “I have to warn you about the trip back down,” Ben said as we languished.  “It seems very steep when you first step onto the cable, and the height of the tower here will be very apparent.”

He was right.  From up here, the cable looked like a steep tightrope upon which no one could possibly stand.  After a few steps, the howling volume of air on all sides, above and below, was very apparent.   The strategy of looking intently at feet and hands, which worked so well on the way up, suddenly fails.  Ben was kind enough to stay close behind, spouting fairly somewhat soothing facts about the bridge. For instance, the bridge was first proposed in 1872 by a character of the San Francisco streets named the Emperor Norton.  Twenty-eight men died building the current design.  “About four per mile,” he helpfully pointed out. “There is a majesty and terror we Americans love in our engineering and architecture,” Ben said.  “Maybe it has something to do with how it had compete with such a vast, unknown continent.”

Safely back on the ground, the sun shone and people were humming happily.  Ben smiled like a guy who’d just finished taking his dog for a walk.

“I am much too comfortable on that bridge now,” he said.  “Sometimes, I have a Michael Jordan moment where I unhook, close my eyes, and walk from one hookup to the next.” He shook his head as if to make a mental note not to do that, hopped on his bike, and rode off.