Author: Jeff

Justin & I picked up the rental car & headed up to BC today. Two hour drive & three hours waiting in the mile long line at the border. The sun coming in through the window & only tanning my left arm.

We found the hostel, parked and everything. Then hunted down a couple of burgers, famished. We walked down to Stanley Park & walked around on the beach – low tide. We walked until we were ready to drop – went around in the woods a bit & down to the beach on the north side of the park. Miles & miles, or km & km.

Exhausted, we stop somewhere for some ice cream & tea, make our way back. And here I am.

Tomorrow evening it’s the David Byrne concert.

My brother’s outgoing voicemail message is a guy named Joaquin explaining that this isn’t his phone number.

82 °F
Mostly Cloudy (cynics)
Feels Like 84 °F
Barometer: 29.95 in; falling
Wind: NA/7 mph
Humidity: 53%
Visibility: 10 mi

[From weather.com]

The little strip of park by the reservoir is filled with hipsters, sunbathers, and transients lounging in the sun. A goth girl walks by, hiding from the sun under a big black umbrella.

At Vivace, a girl my age sits with a large 64 piece box of crayons (not Crayola) in front of her – the size box that makes little kids jealous of each other. I keep turning to look at her, she looks like an acquaintance, but I have more of a back view than a profile view, so I can’t tell if it’s her. When I get up to leave, I take a good look, & it’s not my friend. But it is a 20sish person sitting in a coffee shop, drinking hot cocoa & eating a banana (or at least carrying a banana around), filling in her coloring book. And that’s within the range of eccentricity that I find admiral.

Continuing with the theme of public displays of social or anti-social behavior and creative bicycling witnessed while at, on my way to, or on my way from the grocery store on Sunday evening between the 9:00 X-Files and the 11:00 X-Files: Three people riding one bicycle.

I know, it would be more effective if I had pictures.

Last night, Mari and I headed up to Ballard, the Tractor Tavern, for Sara’s birthday. The doorman didn’t find our names on the guest list, but was sufficiently convinced when we invoked Sara’s name that he let us in without paying a cover.

Sara was nowhere in sight and, come to think of it, there were no familiar faces – just the staff and the band setting up. “Are we early?” I said. “Do we have the wrong night?” Mari said. When we were ordering our drinks a guy came up to us and told us, “Sara’s birthday is in two weeks.”

Mari and I sat in a booth and talked about her wedding, days past, and the Red Elvises. The bar filled up and we listened to the country music.

I just ran into Steve, a former housemate. Yesterday I ran into Jim, my boss at the twice-since merged out of existence cell phone company. A couple of weeks ago Leslie, another former housemate, suddenly remembered who I was, though I’ve seen around town a bit in the last few years and never responded to waves hello.

These are all people I was around pre-Amazon. And somehow the weather the last couple of days has put me in a 1995-ish mood (though I’ve lived under a sporadic drizzle every year since then).

Sometimes I think we should be able to erase the world’s memory of harmless yet embarrassing things we did more than five years ago.

A guy is over-friendly to me in the grocery store. The cashier says he has senioritis, he has two more shifts & is moving to New York. I walk out & head down Pine.

I walk around the couple making out on the sidewalk. On the next block, across the street someone is walking through a parking lot moaning. I pass a man walking up the hill, he is humming an “Emergency Broadcast Service” tone.

Walking across 12th, I pass someone going the other way. In one arm he’s carrying a pair of vintage roller skates & a plain wooden frame (the type you stretch a canvas or silkscreen over). In the other he has a molded case for a musical instrument, or typewriter, or something.

I turn off of Pine and don’t see anyone else.

I wait at the dirty 7-11 bus stop for the bus to Fremont. Two kids are sitting on the narrow bench under the bus shelter and their father is pacing around a little. A tiny Trek bicycle with training wheels, just the right size for the little boy, is sitting next to the bench. The little girl’s Birkenstocks are sitting on the sidewalk in front of her. The boy keeps taking off and putting back on his sandles until his father tells him to stop. The boy points out that his sister has taken off her shoes. She justifies her barefeet by explaining that they’re slip-ons. The three of them occassionally speculate about which of the approaching buses might be their’s.

My bus arrives and the family stands up to get on. The father picks up the bike. The driver gestures for them to wait while passengers unload. An old woman gets off, the driver looks back down at us and shakes his head. “The bike is going to have to go on the rack,” he points at the bike rack on the front of the bus, where a full-sized 18-speed is taking up one of the two available slots.

The father hesitates. And vaguely stammers out that he’d rather carry it onboard. “It’s so small.”

The driver shakes his head and explains that they’re not supposed to let bikes of any kind on board. The father pauses, deciding how much of an issue he want to make of this. “But,” the driver decides, “Just this once. I’ll let you on . . . as long as you keep it out of the aisle.”

We get on. The kids sit behind the driver in seats facing the aisle and the father sits across from them with the bike tucked partly under the seat.

The driver repeats, “I need to have the aisle clear.”

So, the father moves to the first available of the right-side forward-facing seat and holds the bike awkwardly in his lap. I’m a couple of seats back on the left-hand side.

We get moving and make a couple of more stops. The little girl asks her father how far this bus goes. “It’ll take us all the way home.” The little boy reads a bus-ID number of some kind off the window backwards.

We stop at the the last interchange before the Fremont Bridge. The bridge is up to let a tall boat go by, so it’ll be a couple of minutes. The driver is going to take full advantage of this time. He unbuckles his seatbelt, turns around, and walks over to the father. He explains again, “We’re really not supposed to let you bring any kind of bicycle on board – even one that small.”

The father nods his head. He grimaces and seems to think, Yes, I know . . . I think I’ve heard something about this.

“You see, I really should have made you put the bike on the bike rack. But I’m letting you bring it on board, even though I shouldn’t.” [1]

“Yes, I understand. Thank you.”

We cross the bridge into Fremont. I step off the little despot’s bus into the increasingly bleak-looking center of the universe. (But that’s another story for another day.)

[1] Actually I seem to remember that, except for the first and last stops, passengers aren’t allowed to put bikes on the rack in the Ride Free Area. But the driver chose to exclude this bit of esoterica from the mix.

The girl in black is trying to get the tiny flies off the zine she’s reading without injuring them. But they’re firmly attached. One of the zine-guys says she should flick it, anyone else would. They’re unfazed when she blows at them. Finally one of them flies away, the other lands on her hand. I get in close and try to coax the fly onto a chunk of gravel. It holds fast for a few more seconds and only flies away of its own volition.