Cable Cars

I start each day with ideas of epic bloggery, my brain teeming with ideas that span the entire arc of human existence and into uncharted metaphysical realms. Words that beg to be released bubble within my cerebrum, bouncing around in a Brownian motion of Riverdance-level intensity. Each of these unborn topics has the potential to elicit epiphanies, inspire spirited discourse among readers, and possibly change the course of human history. In my mind, these epic unwritten blogs are destined to be the future gems of the literary world -- the "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" of the atomic age.

But alas, my friends, such a destiny appears to have little chance of being fulfilled. By the time I actually motivate myself to sit at the computer and type, the pressures of daily life exert themselves, and I find myself with too few available minutes to allow for the full manifestation of these epic concepts. And so, one of two things must happen -- either I post nothing, waiting in vain for an uninterrupted multi-hour timespan in which to fully flesh out those Bard-dethroning ideas...or I write a few paragraphs of half-baked claptrap that can be spewed forth without any great mental effort or time expenditure. For the last few weeks, I've been in the former mode; knowing that my tales of high adventure on the west coast deserve the full-monty literary treatment, I have waited for the opportunity to sit uninterrupted long enough to share the details in a form that would do the adventure justice. Oh, it was epic, all right -- nearly hobbit-esque in its scope! The saga would include tales of vast underground caverns filled with mysterious rumblings, descriptions of daring escapes from hostile islands, accounts of death-march footsteps across precipitous slopes through conditions from cold drizzle to searing heat, possible hallucinations, and a personal account of witnessing the cruelty of Nature as her creatures struggle mightily in a Darwinian fight for sustenance.

And yes, there were more mimes, too. Oh, the humanity!

So you simply must understand that the lack of Keeping Pace blogulence in the recent weeks has been out of my love for literature and the associated quest for the highest quality in tale-telling, and has nothing whatsoever to do with laziness, addiction to Star Trek reruns on the Retro Channel, or eating so many peanut butter cookies that my greasy fingers are unable to manipulate the keyboard. No...It's all about the art.

So...since no epics seem to be forthcoming, let's see if we can't spew out a few pages of hack writing, just so I'll have some surrounding text within which to insert my photos from the trip. OK?

(In case you're curious, the "death march" I mentioned was a long walk I took to wander through San Francisco's Chinatown, which has some really steep hills. And the bit about Nature's struggles was regarding pigeons and seagulls duking it out for french fries along the piers. You'll have to use your imagination to flesh out those stories. Sorry.)

Vast Underground Caverns

I was raised in Kansas. We had no oceans, ate no fish (other than Mrs. Pauls'), and saw no boats larger than a suburban driveway. We also had diesel-fueled buses for public transportation, and had only seen cable cars on Rice-a-Roni commercials. And since Rice-a-Roni seemed like some sort of mutant commie unnatural mix of Things Which Do Not Belong Together, I didn't pay much attention to those commercials, either. So in my mind, the famous San Francisco "cable cars" were these old-timey, train-ish kinds of things that made a lot of clanging noises and went down steep hills in the middle of the street.

I had never spent a second thinking about their source of motive power. If asked, I would've guessed that they were powered by electric motors fed from overhead wires...and that those wires (being all wire-like and stuff) were called "cables". And after an informal survey, I think it's safe to say that I'm not the only non-Californian who would think that way. Therefore, I'm writing this blog as not only a travelogue, but also to provide education to millions of former Kansans and midwesterners. (Not Oklahomans, though -- they tend to resist education.)

So here's the news flash, people -- Cable cars are actually pulled by cables. That's right...they have no motors at all; they just get dragged up and down the streets by a system of moving underground cables on pulleys. Think of it as a subterranean ski lift, only instead of a chair hanging from the wire, there's a train car with a "grabber" that reaches beneath the street to hold tight for its free ride.

There is actually a slot in the middle of the street. Beneath this slot, the cables are in constant motion while the system is in operation. The cable car extends its grabber (think: ViseGrips^® on a stick) into the slot, finds the cable, and latches on for the ride. The cable car operator controls how tightly the grabber grips, so he can vary the speed of the car from a dead stop (no grip at all) to the top cable speed of 9.5 mph (kung fu grip). Again, you might think of it the way a ski lift chair can be slowed down as it swings around to pick up a passenger vs. its full-tilt speed when locked on to charge up the hill.

The entire system is powered from one central location, where massive electric motors spin the wheels that pull the cables. The cables fan out from this central facility and run beneath each street that features a cable car route. Giant underground pulleys direct the cables around corners and up and down the hills. It's quite marvelous to think that there's an entire world of hidden machinery lurking beneath the streets, and that somebody actually came up with the idea to do this.

"Hey Chauncey."

"What's that, Edgar."

"I got me an idear. Let's dig us a bunch o' trenches, mount some pulleys, and run cables underneath the city so we can pull funny-lookin' little train cars without have to use horses anymore."

"Sounds like the bee's knees, Edgar. Let's do it!"

Um, that is not a direct quote, but there is an extensive history of the project at the Cable Car Museum, which happens to be in the same building that houses the motors and wire-splicing equipment, etc. Here it is:


They really did design the system for the express purpose of replacing the horses that used to drag the carts around. At first glance, having a few Clydesdales pulling hayrack rides around the city may seem to be the Occam's Razor solution for the public transportation problem...but according to the museum, the steep hills and high cost of oats (not to mention the, um, ecological difficulties encountered when said oats are, um, disposed of) combined to make it more economical to use electric motors in place of the ol' gray mare. Sure, there's the difficulty in digging up the streets and planting all this hardware underground...and there's the challenges of oiling the pulleys, fixing frayed cables, and designing the kung fu grip mechanism. But apparently, the bean counters were still able to justify the infrastructure investment. And so it was built.

Of course, with the relentless advance of technology, it eventually became cheaper to put small motors in each train and power them via overhead electric lines. These vehicles, chugging around town without the benefit of an underground tow rope, are known as trolleys, streetcars, and (nowadays) light rail. But though they may be more efficient, they don't have the nostalgic charm or comforting underground rumble of the old cable cars; so San Francisco decided to keep the archaic system around for historical ambiance and tourist revenue. Indeed, while I was there, it seemed that every passing cable car was chock-a-block with camera-wielding out-of-towners, their faces plastered with smiles as wide as the bay.

I wonder how many of them were craving Rice-a-Roni?

So, with that I shall sign off, with a promise of at least one more short piece about my experiences in the San Francisco area. Alcatraz!

In the meantime, keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, and have a great day!