"Oh my god!" I screamed!
I was 196 feet in the air, on a bridge over water. Ahead, the road disappeared as it appears to at the crest of a San Francisco Street. No, like Disneyland’s Splash Mountain: you're floating log reaches the crest where you know it will plunge down. You try to look over the edge but don't see anything but space.
"Don't look down," I said.
"Yes, stupid, look down. You're driving. And you're doing down there whether you like it or not."
So, I screamed as the bridge-road took a 196-foot dive to a depth just skimming the water.
Sweetpea, lying on the seat beside me, couldn't see over the edge of the window and only knew that I tend to have outbursts once in a while.
So, why was I there?
Well, let me tell you, the Universe wanted to give me a thrill. And me, with my propensity for making wrong turns, it was an easy task.
I was in Astoria, Oregon, having just driven 350 miles from home, and could see my motel sign, a dip down onto a street below mine.
Ms. GPS was talking to me: "Turn left at Portway Street," she said. I spun around trying to see where Portway Street was and drove straight ahead onto the bridge's on-ramp. And then the little twerp GPS was silent. Did she tell me I had passed my turn-off? Nooo.
I was on the Astoria Megler Bridge, a 4.1-mile bridge, the longest continuous truss bridge in North America. It was built to a height of 196 feet at one point, so ocean-going vessels could sail beneath it without knocking their masks off. Or whatever they have on board that sticks up to that height.
It was also built to withstand wind gusts to 150 miles per hour and a water speed of 9 miles per hour. The citizens of Astoria thought William Buggee, the architect, was crazy and said nobody would use it, but an average of 7,110 vehicles cross it daily, and Semis no less.
I had never heard of the Astoria Bridge, one of the best ways to have an adventure. I was fixated on that span of road ahead that was jacked up over the rooftops with a little bitty car climbing up its sloping entrance. "That doesn't look safe to me," I said, and then I was on it.
Those aren't bugs up there, a tractor-trailer and a car.
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The mighty Columbia. I would call it "Old Man River," but that belongs to the Mississippi. Instead, it's Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. I have been curious most of my life about the mouth of the Columbia, and I thought the bridge was over the mouth, but my friend, whom I was visiting, said I was over the river, you can't see the mouth as it is out in the ocean.
But there was water all over the place, first a bridge over a bay into the city, then the river four miles wide and its famous bridge.
I grew up in The Dalles, Oregon, alongside the Columbia River. We swam in that river before we knew Hanford Nuclear Production Complex upstream was leaking toxic waste into it. We used to watch great flotillas of logs pushed by tugboats being transported downriver to lumber mills. One year, the river froze with big chunks of ice floating downstream. We watched the building of The Dalles Dam, which flooded out Celilo Falls, an area of the river that was narrow, rapid, and created a natural fish ladder where you could watch salmon throw themselves up the rapids and thus gain access to their home spawning grounds. Folklore says that once the salmon were plentiful, you could walk across the river on their backs.
The Native Americans had a treaty with the US government stating they could fish there forever. Well, they got relocated. There are not many salmon in the river now, but some make their way upstream using cement-built fish ladders around the various dams that change the once tumultuous river into lazy lakes.
But I got to cross that bridge and the Columbia from the perch high above the river, a glorious sight, and better than a roller coaster. Sometimes the best adventures come from a mistake. Mid-river, Oregon changes into Washington State, so I had to drive to Washington to turn around and retrace those four miles back across the river.
The following day, my friend told me that she once walked that bridge with a crowd of other people. Pedestrian crossing is allowed only once a year in October. A shuttle carries the people to the Washington side, dumps them out, and makes them walk up that incline (as punishment perhaps) back to Oregon. Her comment: "There weren't enough porta-potties."
I picked up a small newspaper from her coffee table called, as I remember,"The Columbia,” where an article explained the value of tugboats. The ocean-going ships—those tremendous rigs, cargo ships, and such-need moving water rushing past their propellers to make them maneuverable. In slack water, they are sluggish. The day's heroes are the lowly little tugboats that usher the big guys into the docks.
Prettier than a tugboat, this little lady escorted me down the hill from my friend’s house.
