Game 6: Gang Aft Agley
Near-misadventure on the journey to Rohnert Park to see Sonoma State take on San Francisco State.
11:58 AM is a perfectly acceptable time to wake up on a Saturday. Roll out of bed, see if there are any good college football games on, grab a bagel, maybe a leisurely bike ride around the park.
But on that particular Saturday, December 4, I was supposed to have gotten on a bus at 10:23 AM. That bus would have taken me to Cotati, a semi-suburban town in central Sonoma County about 40 miles from San Francisco. Upon arrival I would have gotten a bite to eat and then biked to neighboring Rohnert Park to watch the Sonoma State Seawolves women’s basketball team take on San Francisco State in Game 1 of a doubleheader, tipping off at 1pm. I spent all week perfecting the timing and planning out my morning.
But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.
We won’t get into details as to exactly why I woke up approximately three hours later than I was supposed to, except to say that I noticed the next day that my phone alarm was being unusually quiet. Once I did awaken I immediately sprung into action figuring out my plan.
First question: can I cancel on myself? No one is going to this game with me, after all. I check my #TheBay16 spreadsheet and Sonoma State doesn’t have another home game besides the 1pm and 3pm games that day until well into January. I am attempting to frontload things as much as possible to clear up my February, so I really want to see what I could do to avoid it.
Second question: can I make it to the second game? I quickly flick through the browser windows on my phone to the Golden Gate Transit schedule. 12:23 bus picking up about a 10-minute bike ride from apartment would get me to Cotati in time to make the 3pm tip of the men’s game. Could I do it? I think I can shower, grab a Clif Bar and go and just barely make it.
With a chaotic half-awake fervor, I shower and hop on my bike, named Jennie, and begin heading down hill. As I feel the wind in my wet hair rolling down Page Street, it dawns on me that I left my trusty helmet behind. Knowing my margins are narrow, I trudge forward. I get lucky with lights and make it to the bus stop, along McAllister Street in the shadow of San Francisco’s City Hall, before the bus. “I did it,” I think to myself.
I reach into my pocket to check the time on my phone and…my phone. Where…where is my phone? I check the other pocket, then the first pocket, then the other pocket again, hoping against hope that the biking shifted my pocket, displacing my phone to a part of my thigh that I didn’t think my pocket could reach to. I get to the stop and check my backpack’s pockets. In that moment, it felt like my backpack had 500 pockets, but I frantically check all of them and no phone. I check my bike bag (why would it be there?) – nothing. It must be back home, making fast friends with my forgotten helmet.
During this internal commotion, my 101 Golden Gate Transit bus arrives. “101 bus?” the operator asks. “Yeah,” I sheepishly respond, not knowing whether I will get on the bus or not.
I go back and forth on it. It’s nice to have a phone but what harm could a nice little unplugged sort of day be?
I walk my bike towards the front of the bus to find the rack, but alas it’s a commuter bus with no rack. He points to an unfamiliar bike drawer thing on the side of the bus, similar to where you would put luggage on a charter bus. The operator can sense my confusion and intimidation, though I’m sure had no sense of the immensity of those emotions within me at that particular juncture.
As he begins to make his descent to street level to help me with the bike door, my internal monologue starts to yell reasons why this was a bad idea at me as quickly as it could come up with them, with varying degrees of severity:
You told no one about this. You texted nobody after you woke up and only mentioned in passing to your roommate about what you were doing. If something were to happen, you would be totally off the grid. Loved ones would have been worried almost immediately.
You think you know the way from the bus stop to Sonoma State but that’s probably your navigational hubris showing.
You would be so bored on the bus.
If your bike light goes out you would want a flashlight.
You could get in a crash and need to call 911.
You couldn’t get pictures for the Substack!
Hell, you couldn’t even get in the game because your required proof of COVID-19 vaccination is…on your phone.
Thankfully, logic prevails.
“Actually, I’m not going to get on this bus,” I tell the operator. He’s less taken aback by this change in heart than my social anxiety would have predicted, and he swiftly retreats onto the coach and recommences taking the other passengers who had their sh*t together in that moment to Marin and Sonoma Counties. I glumly re-mount Jennie and begin to ride back up the hill to home, contemplating my own absurdity.
When I return home, I see my phone lying on my bed, mocking me. I first check if I can get a car from Getaround and drive up myself. No cars available in my area, sadly. What about another bus? That would get there too late. Then the Hail Mary: the SMART train.
SMART is a commuter train that runs from the Larkspur ferry terminal in southern Marin County up to Santa Rosa. Its Saturday schedule is sparse and poorly-aligned with the ferry and bus service, so it didn’t figure into my planned trip up, but if I was able to get to Larkspur, it would be much faster than the bus. Sonoma State is within a 30-minute walk from the Cotati station, so I didn’t need my bike. This…could work.
I check Lyft and find a reasonably-priced ride that is scheduled to arrive at 1:34, the exact same time as the departure of the SMART train. If I miss the train, that would be it. I am concerned but I pull the trigger.
Thankfully my driver, Roberto, is a little faster than the predictions expect and I get to Larkspur with four minutes to spare. I’m off to Sonoma County. The train is, to my surprise, more than half-full, with weekend warrior bikers, families with train-loving children, and thirtysomething bar crawlers. It’s also the holiday train, complete with Christmas lights, decorative wrapped presents, and conductors (who I believe from a conversation I overheard were a pair of sisters) donning Santa hats. When I arrive in Cotati, I have just enough time to walk to get tacos (my first real food of the day) and then take another Lyft to campus, arriving just on time.
It all worked out in the end1, somehow, but I couldn’t help but think of what would have happened had I gotten on without my phone? And why was that so appealing to me in the first place?
Sonoma State is the second NCAA Division II team I’ve encountered on #TheBay16 after Holy Names. Both SSU and SF State are part of the California Collegiate Athletic Association, which is comprised of 12 campuses of the California State University system, the largest such system in the country. Sonoma State was founded in 1961 and is located in Rohnert Park, a 60s-era planned suburb on the site of a former seed farm. SSU is home to the Seawolves, a rare literary mascot as the name was derived from the title of a 1904 Jack London novel.2
As it turns out, no matter which game I went to, I would have still seen Rick Shayewitz coaching Sonoma State. After four years as the women’s team coach, he took over double-duty over the men’s and women’s basketball teams, unified under the unusual title “Director of Basketball.” This is enabled by the fact that Sonoma State plays all of their conference games as doubleheaders. I’m exhausted and uneasy just thinking about what it would be like to coach two different basketball teams for a combined four hours straight, so I’m impressed he can pull it off. You could hear a hoarseness overtaking Shayewitz’s voice as the second game wore on. Coming into this game, he had yet to notch a win as men’s head coach.
SF State is, of course, also a #TheBay16 school, one I will see soon. They were originally the Golden Gaters in honor of the strait connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. The nickname was later shortened to the Gators in a sensible albeit zoologically-confounding move. The Gators were 3-4 coming into the day, with #TheBay16 wins against Holy Names and Dominican but a loss to Academy of Art.
Unlike many of the Division I rosters I’ve seen so far, both teams leaned heavily on the Golden State for players; of the combined 30 names on the two rosters, only two players had listed hometowns outside of California.
If teams are evenly matched, it can be hard to tell the difference between good teams and great teams. Seeing basketball at all levels as part of this journey, I’m hoping to hone this skill a little bit better. It’s hard to strip away the bias of knowing the teams playing but I think I’m getting a little better at sensing and describing it.
One thing was shooting. Both teams had a hard time getting going from the floor and neither squad cracked the high 30s in shooting percentage. Compare to two days prior where Cal shot 50% on their way to a win over Oregon State, who in defeat still mustered 43%.
The defensive switches and general off-ball movement wasn’t as crisp and automatic as they are in top-level Division I games; there was a lot of back-and-forth among the players about where they were supposed to be in different places and the offenses were not operating nearly as smoothly as they were in St. Mary’s-TCU or even SJSU-South Dakota. The players seemed to be flying around a bit too erratically at times, including an instance early in the second half where an SF State player missed a dunk spectacularly.
But none of this meant that it wasn’t a good game to watch. The atmosphere in the Wolves’ Den was lively and the crowd was engaged; it was the best crowd besides the Cal game. There was also a tremendous amount of energy coming from the benches, with chants and celebrations on both sides. There was a man next to me, sitting alone with a Sonoma State hat, who seemed angry for basically the whole game. I feel for people who wake up every day and feel the need to bring that energy into the world.
The Wolves’ Den is a concrete-clad building on the northeast corner of Sonoma State’s campus. The interior felt dated but the scale of the arena felt much more substantial in scope than I expected. One wall was festooned with advertisements from local hotels, restaurants, and even the area Costco.
The game itself stayed relatively close throughout; the Gators led by 3 at the half and expanded that lead to 9, but the Seawolves came roaring back and took the lead after a 14-2 run.
The pinnacle moment of the game came with under half a minute left and Sonoma State holding a 52-51 lead. San Francisco State guard Eche Okeke drove to the basket in an attempt to take the lead and was called for an offensive foul. The crowd went wild, save for the small cluster of SF State fans sitting near me. Sonoma State sunk their free throws after a second foul and the Gators couldn’t get a good look to equalize things, falling 54-51 and giving Shayewitz his first win as coach of the SSU’s men’s team.
After the game, I walked across the mostly-empty campus through the foggy Sonoma County dusk on my way back to SMART, stopping for bubble tea as a timekiller. I rode SMART just as far as San Rafael, where I had to kill more time to wait for the first of three buses I would take to get home.3
The Sea-Wolf, the Jack London novel that inspired Sonoma State’s nickname, is a psychological adventure novel about Humphrey van Weyden, a hapless and bookish San Franciscan who, after surviving a ferry collision, is picked up by a sealing ship captained by the domineering and hedonistic Wolf Larsen. Van Weyden survives a mutiny attempt against Wolf and is promoted to mate after the previous mate was murdered by Larsen.
Humphrey and a poet named Maud manage to escape Wolf, only for them to reunite by chance after Larsen’s boat floats to their island. Hump doesn’t have it in him to kill Larsen because he wants to avoid eternal damnation or something, but then Larsen tries to kill van Weyden, only to be thwarted by a stroke. Larsen eventually dies and Humphrey and Maud make it okay, albeit fundamentally changed4.
Many of London’s stories are about someone leaving a comfortable place under unfortunate but seemingly mundane circumstances and ending up facing some interminable series of catastrophes. The incident at the bus stop, where I almost set out on a journey completely unprepared for what was about to befall me, is a lot like something you’d see in the early pages of a Jack London tale. It’s Buck getting kidnapped from Judge Miller’s farm in Call of the Wild. It’s the narrator of “To Build a Fire” trudging out in -75°F weather to find his fellow prospectors. It’s Humphrey van Weyden’s ferry crash.
I don’t think I would have been dragooned onto a seal hunting adventure or frozen to death in the Yukon, but it’s sort of darkly awe-inspiring to think that not having a phone with me could have very easily led to a Londonesque sojourn. Because of my fraught relationship with social media, I saw a positive opportunity when I contemplated being without my phone. There’s a reason it didn’t feel like a mistake for a brief, fleeting moment. But being disconnected increasingly can mean isolation and helplessness. Once you factor in how necessary a phone is to be able to successfully get around on a Saturday in sparse suburbia sans car, that helplessness truly could have led to dire consequences.
I could end with some grand argument about how our over-reliance on phones is destroying society or whatever, but Black Mirror covers that well enough. What really stood out to me as an urban planner is how the built environment plays into all of this. We’ve constructed suburban landscapes that, to people without cars or without phones, feel like a psychological adventure novel. Waiting for buses that come every two hours or getting around without wayfinding introduces a level of mental hostility that forces people into cars even if they want to try something else.
There’s a lot of discourse today about how “scary” cities are but the suburbs have an ability to be isolating and disorienting that, to me, is far more bone-chilling than just about anything San Francisco can throw my way.
The outer edges of the Bay Area, where the seed farms and ranchos have given away to college basketball gyms and bubble tea shops in strip malls, have come a long way since the days of Jack London. But if you’re without a car and a phone, it hasn’t changed much at all.
-🏀-
Music Notes
“Animal” by Neon Trees seems to be entering catalog bop status as one of those upbeat songs that just gets played wherever years after its release, a la “This Love” by Maroon 5, and I have no complaints about this.
Doubleheader again so no anthem :(
Upcoming Games
Saturday, December 11: San Francisco State WBB vs. Cal State San Marcos (the plan was to see the men’s team but I already saw them so…)
Sunday, December 12: Cal Maritime MBB vs. Bushnell (It is supposed to rain like crazy this weekend and this was going to be another bike-based adventure so this may not happen, we will see!)
Tuesday, December 14: Dominican MBB vs. Chaminade
Well, not exactly. I left my AirPods at home so I was indeed bored. I also left a water bottle that I had just bought on SMART.
Jack London spent his last eleven years of life at Beauty Ranch, which featured a “Wolf House,” located seven miles east of the present-day Wolves’ Den. Division I Stony Brook University and Division II University of Alaska-Anchorage are both home to Seawolves but both schools claim mythical origins of the moniker without a connection to Jack London.
For those playing along at home, I took the GGT 101 bus to the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza, transferring to the 28 and then 5 Muni routes.
I have never read this book so apologies if I miss some major points.