Commute

The Dumbarton's view is not as interesting as the top deck of Bay bridge, which while heading to San Francisco offers a great city scape. It also doesn't have the feeling of zooming through the water like the San Mateo bridge. It does however, go through a large swath of salt concentration and evaporation ponds that harbor many waterfowl and wildlife. The bay is shallow and lead colored at the southern end and is free of most boats, the shipping traffic is to the north so the only thing to do while crossing is watch the birds.

The process of extracting salt from the Bay's water takes about 5 years from start to finish. The water is diluted by runoff and the Sacramento river, so it is around ¾ (71%) as salty than the Pacific Ocean lurking outside of the Golden Gate. The first step of the process is to flood the shallow concentration ponds encircling the Bay's shallow edges. The water is segregated by narrow earthen levee's into half meter (1.5') deep pools that cover over 100 square kilometers of area (25,000 acres.) As the water evaporates different minerals precipitate out of the solution causing each pond to have a distinct vivid color indicating it's salt concentration. They take on beautiful brilliant hues of red, brown, green and gold, some of which are caused buy animal life. Some of the species that thrive in the salty environment are green algae (Dunaliella) that actually turn redder as the salt concentration increases. The saltiest ponds are full of Brine Shrimp (known as Sea Monkeys to people my age) and Halophilic (salt-loving) bacteria such as Stichococcus.

These colors are best seen when coming in for a landing to SFO, the standard approach takes a looping turn over this area of the Bay allowing you to see the patchwork of different colors. The reddest ones being the pure brine crystallization ponds, filled with the Magnesium laden Bittern. The water can not hold the salt any longer and it crystalizes onto the smooth clay bottoms of the collection ponds, creating a layer of 99% pure salt about 20 centimeters (8") thick.

Much of this salt is used directly for various industrial uses, but some is dissolved in a brine bath, washed though pure drinking water and vacuum evaporated into the pure (99.9%) crystal form you use for food. Who knew?

Once I have crossed the bridge I take a quick detour through East Palo Alto (long ago known as Rancho de las Pulgas or Ranch of the Flea's.) East Palo Alto as once the most dangerous city in the US with a 1 in 500 chance of being murdered, oddly enough it was directly ajacent to one of the richest neighborhoods in the world. Seperated by the proverbial railroad tracks, when a Nasa engineer was beaten to death by some gang members who crossed the invisible wall between the two cities the rich people got fed up and decided to start urban renewal. Now it's got an Ikea and a Home Depot, the street I use cut's a clean swath through the city like your finger on a dusty surface. All trees and flowers, god save you if you make a wrong turn though.

Crossing the El Camino Real — established by the Spanish in the 1760's as a path of Mission's from Mexico all the way to my home county of Sonoma. I head past Hewlett Packard, Xerox PARC, Sun and Stanford University to one of the four campuses my company uses while we build our own high tech building. Sadly on my commute I pass by many vacant new complexes, silent and still new, betrayed by the ability to see through their tinted glass facades to the carefully manicured grounds and empty parking lots on the opposite side of the buildings. They put the interior walls in last as companies like to do their own floor layouts. The bubble bursting caught many developers by surprise, and it will be a long time before these massive buildings will be full of happy worker ants such as myself.

The whole thing takes me about an hour from my little refuge on Alameda, I will have to use the time more constructively than watching the ponds imperceptibly change color over the days... what did I do with those Japanese language tapes?

Oh, the bridges: Dumbarton Bridge, San Mateo Bridge, Bay Bridge, Carquinas Bridge, Richmond Bridge and of course the Golden Gate Bridge. I left out the railway bridges, and technically there are some construction projects that could kind of count, but let's not get too picky.