On the Home Stretch

After lunch we had just a few more miles to go. A lot of it was city streets. The streets of San Francisco are well known for being hilly. The streets on our route were no exception. Several times we were told, “just one more hill”. Wrong. The hills never seemed to end.

We were almost there. According to the route card, we were maybe 2-3 miles from Holding. One of the Safety crew at the intersection gave us the “just one more hill’ line. This time he was right. This was our last hill. But what a hill it was!!

“That’s not a hill! It’s about 3º shy of a vertical wall! Who do I look like, Spiderman??” OK. Enough whining. Time to put on the Big Girl Panties (pink ones, of course!) and get over it. And up the “hill” we went.

As I reached the bottom of the hill, I realized that the spectators had a boombox blaring. When I started up the hill, Earth, Wind, and Fire was singing Brick House. That was all it took. The lady Walking next to me was caught up in the music also and we did our own little mock backup singer/course line type march up the hill as if it was as flat as San Joaquin Valley. We reached the top and I couldn’t see Pina and Saundra anywhere. I’m looking around and said, “I can’t find my people’”. My climbing companion said, “I can’t find my people either.” A few moments later, they appeared at the top of the hill. They had stopped part way up to share their necklaces with some of the spectators along the way. Around the next bend, we found this view: