Running on the San Francisco waterfront

A few hours after landing in San Francisco, en route to a service-learning conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was running along the bay, right outside San Francisco airport. The planes roared overhead.  

But the seagulls, ducks, and other shore birds in the sanctuary did not seem to care.  But as soon as I took just a few steps off the foot path towards them but still at least 30 meters away, one would squawk and everyone would jump into the water and paddle away from the shore.  That’s the duck early warning system at work.  Amazing.  

It was around 18 degrees during the day.  Cool and sunny.  Just a few generally friendly people on the path.  Perfect for running. 

When I went back to the path at night, I saw at one point 6 bright dots lined up in the dark sky, over the water to the east, one of which was clearly a plane landing on the east-west runway.  It turned out all 6 were planes lining up to land.  

A plane was landing roughly every 30 seconds on that runway.  There are 2 landing lanes on each of the 2 runways (east-west, north-south), roughly 200 meters apart. I cannot be fully sure, but I assume the planes are landing on alternate lanes on the same runway.  A plane would be landing before the last one had gotten to the end of the runway, albeit on the other lane.  It is rather dramatic watching the process unfold, knowing that there are hundreds of people on each of the planes.  It must be quite intense working as an air traffic controller in the control tower.