A few months back I walked 101,564 steps around San Francisco in a day. Why? Well last summer I read an article about two guys walking 100,000 steps around the city and I thought, “I can do that.” I picked a Saturday, Saturday August 22, and for the two weeks leading up to it I didn’t drink any alcohol, spent the week of drinking plenty of water, eating the right foods, carbing up, going to bed early, and on the night before I loaded up a backpack with PB&J sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, some orange slices, electrolytes, and a camera and film. The morning of I woke at 2:30am, showered, made some coffee, and drove over the bridge and by 4am I was off to the races, well…off to the walk.
I packed a point and shoot camera and four rolls of film with the intent of documenting the sights and people along the way. I knew I’d see the city in all the phases of the day and I wanted to capture it. I had a grand idea of taking pictures of all the characters I’d cross along the way but that idea very quickly got squished as I realized if I stopped and talked to people and took their picture the walk would take forever to complete. So I decided to just stick to shooting scenes and objects as I found them…things I didn’t have to spend too much time stopping to do because the goal was to finish before it got dark. Once I got moving, once I really got into the meat of the walk it was head down and eye on the prize so stopping the flow to carry on conversation with someone would have been detrimental to the goal.
I saw the city asleep, waking up from that sleep, coming to life through the early morning and afternoon, calming down as the afternoon light drew long, and then awaking again for the night life. It was really was quite the spectacle to hit so many different personalities of the city in one day. Starting at the Ferry Building, down to Chase Center, turning back to walk the Embarcadero through Fisherman’s Wharf and out to Crissy Field, go back and forth over the Golden Gate, up through the Presido and into the Panhandle, looping around Golden Gate Park a few times before heading out to the Sunset, walking down the Great American Highway all the way to the Zoo, turning back to head into the Park to loop around and around it again, leaving to retrace my steps back to my car to finish the 46.67 miles in 15 hours 21 minutes 59 seconds. I missed finishing before dark by about 45 minutes. The blister didn’t show up until the last ten miles and took three weeks to fully heal.
Here’s some of those pictures I snapped along the way.
Camera - Olympus Epic Stylus 120
Film - Kodak Ultramax 400
