Let’s Meetup, Shall We?

Last night I joined an amateur astronomy meetup to go hear a lecture on Mt. Tam about the origins of the universe and why we are all moving so rapidly away from one another and was it something we said. The lecture was to be followed by a stargazing opportunity through lots of giant telescopes in the Rock Springs Parking lot. I thought stargazing sounded kind of romantic. 

I drove up there at sunset. It happens to be one of my favorite bike rides, up Mt. Tam from my front door, and I was feeling very good indeed as I drove. I had ridden the route in the early morning and was remembering the ride and listening to some favorite music as i took the curves maybe a little too fast and yes, I was sort of fantasizing that I might amazingly be about to meet the next love of my life at an astronomy meetup. He would be endearingly geeky, maybe a little overweight, hugely smart in a physics astronomy brilliant sort of way, and we might bond over the fact that E=MC squared, or that it’s turtles all the way down. Or maybe he would share his blanket with me, because I had forgotten to bring a blanket. Or water. Or snacks. Or really anything that thinking folks would bring to a late night astronomy meetup at the top of Mt. Tam. But I reckoned that I had enthusiasm going for me, and that was at least something.

The sun was setting very huge and red over the ocean as I drove along the Seven Sisters ridge, and there were tons of folks out on the mountainside on their blankets with their water and snacks, watching the sunset. Couples, mostly, I noticed. But some random groups of people and that encouraged me, because I was about to be a part of a random group of people (16, I had read on the Meetup site) all just gathering on the mountaintop to hear some lecture about the origins of the universe and then huddle intimately around telescopes in the Rock Springs Parking Lot and stargaze.

I thought stargaze had a sort of romantic ring to it. But no agenda really. I was just there to learn about the universe and the moving away from one another thing.

I finally made it to Rock Springs. Now I had signed up online for this meetup, and had even been so together as to print out the parking pass, which we were instructed to display on our dashboard so as to allow us to park at Rock Springs Parking Lot. Nevertheless, when I arrived there, it looked really full, and there was a very official looking small type of woman in one of those vests with the shiny stuff on it and she was waving at me in a negative sort of way. You can’t park here, she said loudly and officially, as I rolled up to her. This is for the SFAA event. You have to go to the upper parking lot.

Here is what I wanted to say to her: Who are you, exactly? And what is SFAA? I signed up for this event! I have a parking pass on my dashboard to allow me to park here! What is your job title, and with what spurious authorization are you disallowing me from parking here? 

Here is what I said to her: Oh, okay.

I drove up the road towards where she was gesturing. About a quarter mile up, there was a small parking lot. Cars were parked all around the perimeter, but there was a big open space in the middle. There were no markings, but someone had just parked there in a generally parking lot type of way, so I parked right beside them. I was just noticing folks heading down a trail that looked like it might lead to the lecture arena, and feeling pretty good about having snagged parking, when the small woman in the shiny jacket just sort of appeared in front of my car and started yelling you guys can’t park here! You can’t park here!

It may seem tediously repetitive at this point, but again, I let her bully me yet further up the mountain to where there was a muddy gravel parking lot with tons of spaces. Then I walked the quarter mile back down the mountain, by which time I was fifteen minutes late for the lecture. 

At this point, it was getting dark and I was really tired, having spent most of the afternoon at a bachelor party in Sonoma wineries, drinking many tiny tastes of multiple types of wine that all added up to only two glasses, but still, it had been very hot. Clearly another story. The point is, I joined the lecture well into it, so I completely missed the thesis (if there was one), plus there were many more than sixteen people there, and I realized that SFAA actually stood for San Francisco Amateur Astronomy, which I supposed belatedly was what my Meetup was part of. 

The sad truth of it? I was just one of about two hundred folk all sitting on the side of a mountain in the gathering dark hearing from some nerdy astronomer guy how gravity was really responsible for everything, everywhere. Three slides in, I was having to prop up my chin with both hands. I did hear him mention that billions of years in the future, we’ll all be so far apart that the night sky will be very boring indeed. However, I was comforted by his next assertion that by that time Earth will have been incinerated by the sun. So we don’t have to worry about the night sky being dark and gloomily devoid of stars after all. Hooray!

By the end of the lecture, I was only too glad to stumble off into the darkness and try to find my car. The thought of trying to stay awake through the romantic telescope stargazing portion of the evening was just too much.

So my current reading material happens to be a memoir by the former Marin County Coroner, Ken Holmes (remember: I am a hospice nurse). It’s a grisly sort of book entitled “The Education of a Coroner,” and in it, Ken devotes an entire chapter to the so-called Trailside Killer, who raped and killed a bunch of women on Mount Tam in the 1970s. As I was reading it, I remember thinking what woman would be so stupid as to go hiking alone on Mt. Tam? And yet here I was, wandering alone up a deserted road on the mountain IN THE DARK with only a vague idea of where my car was. Plenty of crackling in the bushes. Deer. Squirrels, probably. Are squirrels nocturnal? Does anyone know I’m up here, at a meetup, supposedly meeting the next love of my life? Will they even find my body?

I located my car, and headed gratefully back down towards the Rock Springs parking lot, intending to slope quietly by all the romantic stargazers huddled round their telescopes and drive at high speed back to Fairfax and my bed, which was really calling me at this point. Imagine my surprise and delight when my way was barred by the same little woman in the shiny jacket! She was once again, with tedious predictability, waving me away from my intended route. You can’t go that way, she called out officially. The road closed at sunset. You have to go down the mountain.

I’ll cut this short for you. Down the mountain the way I had come=40 minutes. Down the mountain the way she was making me go=90 minutes. Try to imagine the names I called her as I drove down Mt. Tam via the Pantoll, Stinson Beach, Olema, and all the way through the San Geronimo Valley to Fairfax. Really, it wasn’t her fault. And yet I called her all those names. Plus it was foggy and blowing, as it does on the coast in summer, and I was seriously exhausted. Still, I reasoned, that was a meetup, right? I mean, I could have met the next love of my life. Maybe next time.