Hyde & Beach Cable Car

Starting a PhD program in Fall 2020 was a challenge. Fully virtual classes, heavily reduced population densities in labs, and a ban on program-sponsored icebreakers made it hard to make friends and adjust to life in a new city. I did what many probably did: I spent time outside, the only real option in a pre-COVID vaccine world. The cable cars, a favorite of mine when visiting as a tourist many years prior, had shut down during the early pandemic. But a decision was made to wheel them out to the turntables as the holidays grew near so that people could have some semblance of normalcy. It’s probably cheesy, but it worked on me. A Saturday spent biking from Tidelands Housing to Hyde & Beach to see a dressed-up cable car is one of my favorite memories from my first quarter of grad school.