As any creative type knows, coming up with the big, bizarre idea is the easy part. Pulling it off? Now that’s another story.

In February, I told you that my fellow Chronicle writer Peter Hartlaub and I had struck on the totally pointless yet fun idea of riding every Muni line in one day. We had the ambition. We had the hashtag: #TotalMuni2018. We didn’t have much else.

Now, we have a lot of enthusiastic support. It seems people are eager for a silly diversion amid all the dark news. As one reader put it, “Goodness knows, we need some adventurous fun these days.”

Also, we have a feasible — if terror-inducing — route. (More on that later.) And we have a date: Monday, April 30. I have never looked forward to May Day more.

As a refresher, this crazy notion started when I tweeted a picture of my 4-year-old son typing Muni bus routes into a computer. He’s obsessed with buses and numbers, and easily ticks off every line in order from the 1-California to the 91-Third Street/19th Avenue Owl.

We spend many weekends riding buses. To where? Nowhere in particular. The bus is the journey and the destination.

Hartlaub, our pop culture critic and a parent of two young sons himself, responded on Twitter that I would be a real hero to my boy if I re-created the Total Muni Experience, a stunt pulled off in 1980 by two UC Berkeley grads who had a lazy summer to fill.

One of those Muni fanatics was Larry Baer, now president and CEO of the San Francisco Giants. Baer graciously gave us tips and pledged to join us for a little while on the big day. And he’s sticking to it! Looks like we’ll be cruising down Market Street in a historic F-car with Baer early in the day. You know, just your ho-hum Monday morning commute.

Back to Gallery Preparing for the ride of our lives on #TotalMuni2018 11 1 of 11 Photo: Clem Albers, The Chronicle 2 of 11 Photo: Clem Albers / The Chronicle 1980 3 of 11 Photo: Clem Albers / The Chronicle 1980 4 of 11 Photo: Tania Shah 5 of 11 Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 6 of 11 Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 7 of 11 Photo: Brian Feulner / Special to The Chronicle 8 of 11 Photo: Brian Feulner / Special to The Chronicle 9 of 11 Photo: Brian Feulner / Special to The Chronicle 10 of 11 Photo: Brian Feulner / Special to The Chronicle 11 of 11 Photo: Brian Feulner / Special to The Chronicle





















To answer a few questions we’ve heard frequently: No, we won’t be riding the 76X-Marin Headlands Express. The line runs only on the weekends, whereas others only run on the weekdays. So technically, riding every Muni line in one day isn’t possible. Hey, we’re doing our best here.

Yes, we’ll be live-tweeting, and updates will be posted on SFChronicle.com throughout the day. Our handles are @hknightSF and @peterhartlaub. Follow along! Come say hello if you can find us, and join us for a bus ride or two. There may be a couple of meet-up spots we’ll announce closer to the big day.

But unfortunately, we cannot have people join us for the whole shebang, as many of you kindly offered. It’s going to be hard enough to make all of our quick transfers without a lot of extra people in our pack. Hartlaub is cardio training for this — seriously. I am not. He’s going to be sorely disappointed by my nonexistent sprinting abilities.

Also, to pull this off, we’re going to have to start sometime around 3 a.m., catching the 25-Treasure Island into the city to beat Bay Bridge morning traffic and in time to catch the overnight owl buses before they stop running.

I doubt anything good has ever happened on a Muni bus at 3 a.m., and we fully expect this ride will be no different. You’d have to be insane to want to join us. That, by the way, would prompt a Code 800, which Muni bus drivers use to radio headquarters that there is an “alleged insane person” on the bus.

We’ve learned a lot about Muni in the past several weeks, including its pages of codes. April 30 will be Code 708 — “media on scene” — all day long.

We’re most worried about bathroom breaks, and Muni has a code for that too: 702, for “personal necessity,” meaning the driver can stop for a break, no questions asked. There are some other, more eyebrow-raising codes, including “rendezvous” (707) and “hot body” (761). There are probably logical explanations for these, but I’d rather imagine my own. When the Muni bus is rocking ...

But what’s been most fun about this experiment so far is the people we’ve encountered along the way. Though many San Franciscans grumble about Muni, it’s extremely popular among the little kid set.

Tania Shah, who lives on Russian Hill, said my son sounds a lot like her 3-year-old boy, Ayan Mathur. His older sister was the movie character Moana for Halloween, and Shah suggested that her son be Maui, the demigod from the Disney film.

“Not Maui! Muni!” Ayan countered, insisting he go as the 49-Van Ness outbound to City College. Her son had a Muni-themed birthday with Muni coloring books as party favors and Clipper card temporary tattoos. My son would love this kid, and when I told him about Ayan’s costume, he was inspired.

“This Halloween I’m going to be the 82X-Levi Plaza Express inbound to Sansome and Filbert!” my son exclaimed. Really, he did.

At the other end of the age spectrum is another Muni aficionado, Jean Fowler, 81. As a younger woman, she visited more than 70 countries on five continents. She can’t do that kind of traveling anymore, so she’s gone local, crafting Muni rides that start from her home at the Heritage retirement community in the Marina and fan out around the city.

She’s been designing trips for the past three years and writing articles about them for “the in-house rag here,” she said. She’s ridden every route but one, the 27-Bryant, and is developing a route including it now.

“I’ve seen so many parts of the city that I’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen things I thought I knew from different perspectives,” she said. “This is my travel now. These are my trips.”

But we owe the most to Jerry White, a San Leandro resident who organizes motorcycle rallies. He’s ridden his bike through the Lower 48 in 10 days, so Total Muni should be nothing, right?

While several people created routes for us — thank you so much! — White’s was the most specific and doable. He even did his own practice run, riding the first 20 lines one morning to make sure it worked.

When he was in the thick of route-making for us, he’d sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, see the giant Muni map in his mind’s eye and fret. “Damn you, Heather and Peter!” he’d email the next day. We know the feeling.

So with White’s route, and some fine-tuning by Hartlaub, we’ll be starting on Treasure Island, hitting the owls, doing Market Madness, where we try to ride as many routes near Market Street — cable cars included — as possible, hit the commuter shuttles, ride the F-car with Baer and then fan out clockwise around the neighborhoods.

If all goes according to plan — and it surely won’t — we’ll conclude on the N-Judah at AT&T Park for the Giants game against the Padres that night. We’ll be lucky to make it before beer sales end. But we will get that beer one way or another, and it will be the best one we’ve ever tasted.

I asked White if it’s doable, and he paused for a disconcertingly long time. “I think you can do it,” he finally said. “I don’t know if you’ll make it to the game. I could be wrong, but it’s a lot of buses.”

So are we crazy?

“You’re not crazy. You’re quirky!” he said. “A normal person would say you’re crazy, but I don’t think you’re crazy. Normal people are boring.”

Thanks, Jerry. This is San Francisco after all. Normal just won’t do.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf