Bilge

Riding my bicycle across the Golden Gate yesterday as a big freighter sailed beneath it. I stopped mid-span to watch. The Pusan Senator. Korean vessel, with crisp lines and a bright blue hull. Fine wave arcing from her bow as she sped into the bay. Containers piled high on her deck, filled with microprocessors, dremel tools and acrylic sweaters. Star fruit. Turn signals for Fords. Vats of xantham gum. Prosthetic arms.

Ah, the romance of a life at sea! Papeete one week, Port Moresby the next. Taking on toupees and stuffed wallabies in Sydney. Ultrasonic toothbrush units on Haiphong. Cap at a jaunty angle, a roguish smile, a woman in every port. The life for me.

Suddenly, I was enveloped in a cloud of oily, choking smoke from the ship's stack. An acrid eructation from deep within the bowels of the Senator that yanked me out of my maritime reverie and reminded me of what a fundamentally bilgey enterprise shipping is: for all the radar, all the neatly stacking intermodal containers and fresh paint, there's still cold muck sloshing around in the hold, tacky crusts of salt forming around rusty bolts on peeling pipes, and that one-eyed Maltese sailor who's sworn you'll never make it Yokohama. To say nothing of 90-foot walls of water and giant squid wrapping their tentacles athwart the beam, dragging ye down, down to Davey Jones locker.

A nasty business, No place for a bicyclist. I let the Pusan Senator glide off to Oakland and made for the Presidio.