The day before, at my appointment with the urologist, he mentioned that his hospital is receiving Medicaid patients from other cities around the state. He mentioned one particular city which I suspect is a favorite of wealthy retirees. He says there are no doctors there who accept Medicaid. I wonder if that city considers it's indigent and homeless as not a priority. He tells me he and others have asked administration to hire more medical personnel, so these patients won't have to wait months for care. As yet, 'tis to no avail. The hospital appears to spend its money on a brand spanking new parking garage, and xeriscaping, and big signs announcing their status as a "level 1 trauma center." On my way to work today, I am approaching the corner with the homeless campers. Behind me are a pair of motorcyclists. They pull into a space between a couple of campers. One guy on a dirt bike has no helmet. He looks homeless. The other one is in full racing gear. Saturday. I'm up early and can't get back to sleep. So I'm out of the house early, on the way to work. Turning the corner where the campers congregate, the motorcycles are parked where they were left yesterday. I ride down the street and turn the corner toward the trail, down a hill. At an intersection of a thoroughfare and this busy street, I can see a pair of homeless campers. They are parked facing each other, hugging one corner. One has its flashers on and both front hoods are up. A pickup briefly stops and the driver speaks to someone there, before it leaves. I roll past the campers and turn onto the trail. here at the trailhead is a Porta Potty, and beyond this side of the trail the expanse of a golf course. I hear someone inside. A male voice exclaims, "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! You're a fucking asshole." Some twelve hours later, having snuck in a workout, I'm then back home in time to also sneak in grocery shopping. I decide to finally pull out the headlamp and tail lamp. The trip to the supermarket demonstrates that I need to change the batteries in the headlamp, which I do when I get home. Overnight, I get much more sleep than the previous early morning. Sunday's is now clear for another early lunch with the sister, and a movie at a reopen theater. At the theater I pick up some local free publications I haven't read since a favorite restaurant on my boulevard went out of business not long ago. I then decide on an early dinner at Chilis downtown, not far away. On the pedestrian mall, across the street, a sporting goods place has a big screen TV outside. The city football team is playing today. The daytime temps have been nice so far this Autumn. A local TV sports reporter's post the following day will mention that the high today was 76 degrees F., and the stadium crowds were sellout size. The viewers out on the mall this afternoon are a handful of homeless. The pedestrian mall is pretty empty, and appears to belong more to the homeless. The bike rack where I lock up my bike is between them and the TV. One drunk guy is responding to plays by barking incoherent affirmations. A couple of police walk by and ask him if he's doing okay. "Sounds like your slurring your speech." He slurs that he's fine. Later, as I'm unlocking my bike after my meal, a friend is pulling his unconscious frame up off the ground. A pedicab driver swings past. He has a jersey on for the city's team. Our team isn't doing well, we're down by a couple of touchdowns. An announcer mentions that we "haven't scored in the past 31 minutes." The pedicab driver mentions to a fellow jersey wearer, "The resale value on our jerseys just went up."
On Wednesday, I'm on the trail home when a young couple sails past me on rollerblades. The following day, again on the trail home, I'm headed toward a bend along a soccer field. Coming fast up a hill I'm coming down is yet another guy on rollerblades. This guy had a long push broom in his left hand and a water bottle in his right. On Friday, after work, I detour off the trail home to have a few pieces of chicken under a tree, in a park. The spare kickstand I had put onto my newest bike doesn't do much of a job to keep the bike balanced. It topples over onto me. What I don't realize is, when I pick it up, the quick release on the back rim comes unlatched. I had a tote bag secured on the back rack, the straps looped around the seat post, and one of the straps must have caught the latch when I picked up the bike. It's one for the "are you fucking kidding me?" file. The moment I discover the back rim is unlatched is when I am a short distance from the park. I'm at the end of a pedestrian bridge next to a stretch of road with a guardrail. I stop again and pick up the bike, to find a position where it will stay balanced without falling over. Suddenly, I'm holding the rest of the bike in one hand, and grabbing the back rim, which is now hanging by the cassette on the chain and swinging from the gear assembly. I've known to no longer be surprised by anything for some time now, but this is ridiculous. OK. An easier fix is surely hard to find. I'm replacing the chain around the cassette, sliding the disc back into the brake, and pushing the axle back into the frame when I hear the shuffle of footsteps. From across the road next to where I'm stopped comes a homeless guy. I don't even have to look, I recognize the sound of him. Without looking up, I hear him climb over the guardrail. The following morning, I'm rounding a corner on the connecting trail to work. It's next to a parking lot, popular with the occasional homeless camper or vehicle. One camper alternates between here and a parking lot of some apartments a few yards away, the camper still visible there from here. It's around seven AM and the sun is rising behind an overcast sky. At one end of the parking lot is a short path from the lot to the trail. It's covered with a pile of leaves. On the grass next to the trail is a girl's bike, pink frame, white tires. Digging around the pile of leaves with a twig, sitting on the path, is a balding guy with grey hair. On his back is a child's back
Families And Shit
Sunday is another lunch with the sister. I head out in a light jacket and sandals as it's supposed to be 65 degrees F for a high. But before 10 AM, I'm not dressed warm enough. It's almost 60 now, but there is a cold wind. The entire time we have an early lunch on her porch, and helping her repot plants in her back yard, I feel I'm not dressed warm enough. Sometime around noon, I'm off for home to get more clothes. I also would like to pick up a new T-shirt to wear under my other winter riding gear. The one I've had has never fit. Along the way, I stop at my old deathburger, where I used to try and grab breakfast at 5 AM before the first bus to work. Some years ago. This place used to be something of a refuge for some local homeless. It was not the mental illness circus which the downtown deathburger used to be before the remodel. They coexisted here, part of the neighborhood regulars. This afternoon, I decide I need a snack. Inside the place are a handful of elderly Vietnamese elderly men who sit and converse in one of the new coffee colored booths. At a high table with stools are a grandmother and her three grandkids. A young and slow moving cashier wanders the lobby, lazily busing tables. The manager on shift is bagging Door Dash orders. Then, without warning, the place gets tweaker-bombed. A young mental homeless guy comes quickly inside. He's disheveled with greasy hair, and drags a lavender sleeping bag in one arm. He's non-stop talking to himself, repeating commands given to him by various officials, as I've heard other homeless do. One of the grandkids comes out of the restroom, yelling to his grandma, "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" to let her know he's successfully out of the men's room. The homeless guy begins to make a circle around the lobby. Among his rambling, he interjects "Mommy, mommy..." before asking a customer for two dollars. He doesn't even give the customer a chance to answer and keeps rambling as he retraces his steps back toward the entrance. He's just past the grandma as she mentions to him that he's scaring her grandkids. He replies immediately, "You scare the FUCK outta me! Families and shit..." The manager stops and stares, along with the slow-moving cashier. But the guy is out of the door, raging against the grandma from out in the parking lot as he just as quickly travels down to other parking lots. Families and shit. He's not just on the outside of the traditional family, he claims to be afraid of them.
After my snack, I'm outside unlocking my bike. The temperature has warmed up to the point I'm fine in what I have on. And it's just as well I don't have to head back home. I notice a screw missing from one side of the back rack, otherwise connecting it to the frame. Well, I know where I'm headed now, up to the sporting goods supercenter. It makes the most sense to simply ride the short distance from here to the bike trail, and take the bike trail into the north end of downtown, and directly to the sporting goods place doorstep. Along the way to the trail from the deathburger, I pass other homeless campers and Starcraft pop up tents converted into flatbed trailers, parked along machine shops and warehouses. On the trail toward downtown, there is a detour off trail. Having hooked up with the trail from the sister's place and exited the trail along the way there from the sporting goods place, I'm familiar by now with the ins and outs of this stretch of trail parallel to my boulevard a few blocks to the west. The detour takes riders off onto a side street. Immediately there is a homeless camp. One guy is rummaging in the backpack of another guy on a bike. It's warm enough now to ride without a hood or other head gear against a chill. The guy with the backpack is on a bike. He's in a sleeveless shirt...and a balaclava over his head, exposing only his face., including an unlit cigarette at a corner of his mouth. There isn't much you can do which is unusual if you're homeless, but this comes close. The detour takes us north along a side street, up to another trail further west, or so it appears. Other cyclists don't appear to like this route. One turns back and two others stay on the street. I know better. I'm just too damned familiar with the trail system in the south half of the metro area. I know this particular trail goes a bit west, and then turns back east and hooks back up with the trail north. I've seen this stretch of trail from the train station up the street from where I live. I've just never been on it until this afternoon. I'm soon at the supercenter. A tech replaces my screw for no charge. I find a T-shirt. At a place like this, it ain't gonna be traditional cotton, and at $32, may seem a bit pricy. But it's a chance to get a big deal T-shirt with man made fiber specifically for 'active' pursuits. On the way to the cashier, I price the windbreakers. My trusty old one has a zipper which is beginning to break down. The past week, I stopped into a sportsmen's shop on the trail home, and picked up a combo windbreaker and pants, also for $32. The jacket is somehow roomy and snug at the same time, and I love it. Here, the windbreakers are all over $100. The cashier is a guy with hair down his back. He asks me "what kind of riding" I do. I answer, "Uh, commuter." And as a commuter cyclist, I now have my frame secured, as well as my new T-shirt.
On Monday I have yet again another flat on the way to work. I'm close enough to walk, but I'm a half hour late. Yet business has been on the boom, and I've been staying late more and more days to get everything done. And I'm at work until a half hour after close. Mondays we are open an hour later than he following five days. I don't have long to wait for the bus, which will get me to the train a couple of hours before the sporting goods supercenter closes. The train will get me downtown maybe less than a half hour, and the walk from there to the place, I might make it an hour and fifteen minutes before they close. Perhaps I will be home less than an hour before I go to bed. Fuck that. I will get home and take the bike there in the morning before work. So the following morning, I grab a bus up the street to the train. On the platform is a young woman taking slow steps down the platform. She has sunglasses and a denim jacket on. Her hair is shaved into a thick mohawk which is moussed up onto her head. She appears to be some kind of punk loner intellectual type. I watch as she takes selfies with nothing apparent in the background; a bridge over the tracks, a favorite bus shelter of crazies up on a hill. Very realist, which around these parts ain't necessarily a good thing. I wonder if she just got her haircut. The train whips me the rest of the short way to the end of the line. I lock up the bike at a Whole Foods and step inside for a quick breakfast. Everyone in here looks as if they live downtown. I sit at a bench and dig into breakfast. A heavy guy shuffles up to a bench and table in front of me. He doesn't appear homeless. He bought a bag of chips and a tub of salsa. But he has other bags with him. And he never sits down. He just stands there, staring ahead. He's next to a closed and locked sliding glass door, which opens onto a small patio. It's in the 40s F outside this morning, but he slowly tries to open the door, to undo the latch, without success. I finish eating and he and I leave at the same time. At the entrance/exit is a police officer. The guy talking to her could be any middle-class guy in his fifties: coat, grey hair. But his hair is greasy from not being washed. And he appears as if he doesn't live anywhere around here, with the comparatively trimmed and scurrying people twenty and thirty years his juniors. I hear him ask the officer if he should call 911. She suggests a different number. Outside, a bicycle officer pulls up, and he tells the officer his backpack was stolen. I'm assuming it wasn't on his back at the time.
I've read a couple of recent local newspaper stories about the abrasive effect of some homeless on particular downtown businesses. I notice a garden space with benches just outside, otherwise popular with homeless, have been surrounded by a chain link fence. I've seen this tactic used to deter homeless from other areas. At the foot of the steps over the train tracks, one homeless guy is stumbling his way up to them. He turns and asks me for a light to his cigarette. I tell him I don't smoke. before he comprehends this, I'm over the bridge. I'm at the supercenter with ten minutes to open. Once inside, a tech takes in my bike. She tells me there are still irregularities in the distribution chain, and they have had to rely on product brands which they don't usually carry. They don't have a tube with sealant, but do have an old thorn-resistant one. Between the tech other customers and evenly securing the thicker tube, I'm there for 50 minutes. I ride to the nearest train and catch it to the bus to work. And after work, once again I'm riding home upon a working tube. It's finally cold enough for my winter riding pants. A little rain rolls in, and it's dark when I'm just off the trail. I turn the corner onto the street with the campers and spot a big "road closed" barricade, moved off to the curb. Which road, and why? Then I notice. Whoa daddy. The block with the campers has been swept clean. In the low light, it appears as if not a trace has been left. That's how the city rolls. I don't see any around the far corner either. They were just here yesterday. Homeless camper today, gone tomorrow. Some minutes later, I'm coming down the long street a block from my own. It appears some of those campers have moved up here.
Wednesday morning, I'm coming around a bend in the trail to work. It's a place with a playground next to the river on one side of the trail, and on the other side is a small parking lot next to trees, a favorite spot of homeless. On a section overlooking the playground, 20 or 30 professionally dressed men and women are listening to a guy with a microphone. He's talking about the river. Some eight hours later, I've just turned onto this trail on the way home. Another guy on rollerblades is coming down the trail. Up past where the river surfers were a couple of months ago, I'm up across the homeless camp behind the bent guardrail. This morning, there were a couple people rummaging about the camp. This early evening, there are three or four there. On a patch of gravel next to the trail is parked a station wagon which could be from the 1970s. It has no back window. The inside is full of junk. A guy who could be wearing a poncho is taking a bicycle frame off of the roof. A few minutes along and I'm back where the gathering of professionals were standing. Across the trail from here is the small lot, and a few yards down the road from here is a van equipped with a wheelchair lift. Before I spot the lift, raised level with the floor of the van, I see all the doors open. It's parked out of the way of anyplace. I can tell it's in the possession of someone homeless. He comes out from around the back, carrying something toward the open door with the raised lift. I'm soon off the trail and onto the street formerly with homeless campers. yesterday I bypassed this street on the way to work out of downtown, and this morning I bypassed it again on a detour to the bank. This evening, a lone RV has appeared on the side opposite the open field.
Also on my way home Wednesday, I was approaching the last underpass before I exit the trail. A couple of cyclists had passed by and were then ahead of me, both in neon colored jackets and shorts. The one on the right was in neon green, and I heard him talking to the other. "I've been wanting to try and make garlic bread, " he tells him, "so I may do that." Up ahead is an exit onto an avenue on this side, opposite the exit beyond the underpass. Approaching us ahead is a bright red shopping cart stolen from Target. For a moment, it's the neon jackets and the bright red cart, all out on the same trail. The cart is being pushed by a guy whose clothes and skin are all the same shade of grey. Thursday morning. I'm back out on this trail, a bit further along. I see an exact replica of the shopping cart. The guy pushing it is different but his clothes are the same color. There is a mountain bike laying across the cart, and it appears to be a nice bike. This morning, for the first time in three days, I've come down past right where the homeless campers were. In the daylight, there truly is hardly trace. A line of oil spots, a single can of Modelo beer, a small pile of broken pieces of cinder blocks.
On Saturday, I'm at the gym right after work. Today, I made it in forty minutes. On an old bike. I'm halfway through with my workout when I hear a male berating a female, insisting she begin working out. Did he pay for the both of them? The first thing I see when i come around the corner, from the weight room to the machine room, are two dogs sleeping between two machines. WTF? A young homeless couple is here, bundled in loose-fitting sweats. The female asks the guy not to be a jerk in public. She sits on a couple of machines. He uses a couple of machines. He spots me wiping down the last machine I use, and he thanks me. (?) I use my last weights in the weight room and come back through the machine room. The homeless have disappeared as only they can. So have the dogs. I ask one of the two young guys behind the desk on weekends if they noticed the two dogs. "They're service animals," says the one who's hyper and precluded toward drama. I suggest that the couple is homeless. He animatedly replies, "Legally, there's nothing we can do. Legally, there's nothing we can do."
Something else which happened on my way to work on Friday. I felt a bump on my front wheel. I stopped and discovered a cluster of 15 to 20 thorns in the tire. The first 19 I pull out, which it's recommended not to do, result in no consequences. The 20th thorn is followed by the familiar sound of escaping air, and the green pool of sealant. The rear tube has no sealant. It has a single thorn in it. And, it's flat as the Hemmingwayesque pancake. So, I'm an hour late to work. Yet, I stayed an hour late yesterday. And with the increase in business, I will stay late again today. I think I will still come out ahead on the hours, if not bicycle tubes. Saturday, the rebuilt bike takes me to work, the gym where I see my first homeless work out with their napping dogs, and home again. It running fine. In the evening, I did grocery shopping, where I ran into the lady who was my old boss. The nut who bought the company we worked for seven years ago made a series of decisions. He went out of the country to a nude beach, divorced his wife, and married his Brazilian nudist who then insisted he fire all his female employees. Including her, as his general manager. She now works for the county making more money. I again thanked her for looking out for me during her short tenure as my boss. Batshit crazy days, crazier even than leaving your family for a naked Brazilian who makes you fire your female workforce, I won't soon forget. I hope that Sunday morning is my last trip for some time to the sporting goods supercenter. Dear God. Bus, train, and a quick into the Whole Foods for breakfast. Near the bike parking, I grab a weekly newspaper which I didn't have the chance to do earlier in the week, thanks to my damned flats. Outside, I spot a police officer keeping an eye on the usual riff raff around the transit system hub. Inside, another police officer. Recent stories in the local print media perhaps prompted the posting of a spare officer or two. I'm done soon and up and down the steps across the train tracks. Last night, I looked for an old pair of road hazard tire-liners They are what I used to use, along with thorn-resistant tubes, before sealant came along. I have the tech install both tubes with sealant, and tire-liners. If this doesn't work, there's no more effective combination which will. Then it's over to the sister's for another lunch. I enter the train from the supercenter toward her place. At one spot, a sign announces that all mode of transport are prohibited. I dismount and walk among some fans of the city football team. Is there a game today? I ride along a detour off the trail, on streets near the stadium. This is where all the lots are where owners are cashing in on selling parking to fans. A homeless camper turns a corner. Not long after, I'm at the sisters, and not long after that I'm headed home. It's nice to have a day where I'm actually at home when the sun is up. Along the way, I stop at a doughnut shop with a Middle Eastern guy behind the counter. He appears perpetually forlorn, and he's okay when I pay for a doughnut and a soda with my card. When I attempt to do so for just another doughnut, he asks if I have cash. When I don't, I can't tell if he's any more forlorn. I have things to do at home, checks to write and plants to water, before a date with a lady. A lady who I suddenly see again much more frequently than I did then, and who I hope will be my lady.
Monday, I get called into work a couple of hours early. Mondays, we're open until 6 PM. I stay until 8. I'm through a neighborhood and around a corner toward the trailhead. It's dark and a high school football field lay just across the creek. A game is on and the crowd is enthusiastic. I never come through here quite this late. I'm coming sown a sleepy residential street with horse corrals. On a front lawn is a card table with a young girl seated there. All I can see on the table re some glowing colored bracelets. I hear a voice in the dark ask, "Want some lemonade...or a drink?" Then I'm out on one trail and onto another, approaching a bridge next to a climb up to a huge shopping center. A homeless guy is riding a city bicycle, for which you can pay a fee and ride away from a stand. He pulls to a stop in my lane facing me and dismounts. When I get within a few feet of him, he quietly says, "Oh, shit." Perhaps a half hour later, I'm turning the corner on the block which had homeless campers, for a good year until last week when it was swept clean. The first one has returned. It may be the single one which was parked across the street.
"Abandoned cars from the '70s and '80s provide a makeshift blockade at the town's entrance, stray dogs howl...and every street seems to have a "Wrong Way" sign on either side. ...this old man with a thick white beard appeared out of nowhere. In his left hand, he held a leather-bound book - I'm pretty sure it was a Bible. In his right hand, he held a rifle." ...recalls [the] author of Captain Clive's Dreamworld.
"I get scared a lot here in Colorado. Mostly out on the trail. Or mostly when I'm alone on the trail. And I wear bright clothes so that if I spill off somewhere, maybe somebody'll call it in," confesses [the] author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw. "...I started trying to look back at these...people I pass out there. But sometimes...they'll just be gone." - Westword, 10/14-20/2021
(I remember hearing a kid scream "the cops are coming" as he stared into a vacant field with only trees. "Cops are blue, kid, and they come i large numbers.") ...the politicians, McCarthy included, who came to the park to speak were fake prophets. I went up and stretched out in front of the tank... ...Chief Lynsky himself in the Pig Station (Lincoln Art and Culture Center)...challenged me to kick him in the shins and I replied, "Only in front of NBC." As I walked out of the building with my two cop tails I told them that all high level cops were phony liberals and full of shit. - Hoffman
Tuesday. On the way to work, I stop at a Chick-fil-A for a snack. A kid with a buzz cut and a name tag with "training manager" takes my order. He asks me the standard company series of questions. He is, after all, a training manager. Am I dining in? Do I have their app? Do I want the meal or only the entre? When I come back to the counter for a drink refill, he remembers what I'm having and asks if I need more ice. Am I doing anything fun today? Going to work. Where do I work? Wednesday. I'm out of the house early. I woke up early and knew I wouldn't get back to sleep. I'm coming down a stretch of trail on the way to work, where a long line of trees lines the river bank. Out here on the trail, it's not unusual to see homeless cyclists, especially in proximity to the homeless camp where the guardrail is damaged. I never see homeless cyclists wear bike helmets. Except for this morning. Coming down the trail is a guy with grey stubble, and a knit cap under a bike helmet. The helmet's chin strap isn't secured. The helmet itself appears to be too small for him. Is it a child's helmet? After work, I'm pulling into my parking lot. The ride to work was fine, the ride home as well. A second after I'm in the lot, I hear hissing. My back tire is immediately flat. This tube lasted three days. I take my headlamp and, in the dark, search the handful of yards between where my bike sits and the street. I don't see a single piece of glass. Inside, I pump up the tube. The air is coming from the spot where the valve connects to the tube. Did it tear? Thursday morning, again, I'm back on the bus to the train and over the tracks again. The tech at the sporting goods supercenter tells me it must be a freak accident. I have a different tech every flat tube and he's unaware that I've had so many new ones this month I've lost count.
My tube is replaced in jig time, and I have just enough time to make it to the old downtown deathburger, before I hop a train to a bus to work. It's a game of dodging both the end of rush hour traffic and construction before I'm there. This old downtown location doesn't want anyone to order at the counter anymore, but from the kiosk. The software is different than before the pandemic, and I don't see a button to finish the order. The guy behind the counter makes an exception for me. I order three items from the menu, without cheese. When I collect my order, the items are void of cheese...and eggs. I take them back to the counter, where I show them to an employee from the kitchen wearing body armor and mace on his belt. He tells me he can't take back any food sold. I ask him what he expects me to do with it. A manager now on the register tells him he can take my incompletely prepared food back. I get my correct order from the body armor guy. The guy who ordered after myself is middle-aged, balding, and has his hair dyed neon green. He asks out loud, "Does that guy have body armor?" After work, my ride home is without any flat tires. Along the stretch of trail where I saw the homeless guy with the child's helmet, when I was going the other way, this evening I see a homeless couple who are even more interesting. The guy appears as if he stepped out of the 1950s, circa his hat and plaid wool coat in earth colors. His skin and clothes are all a kind of coffee color, his face that of an old boxer. He walks a kind of bicycle which can be rented for a fee, from stands around the metro area. On the other hand, or rather the other side of the bike, is the lady. Three decades ahead of him, she appears to have a body younger than the guy, and a 1980s wave hairdo. The first thing which struck me about this couple, from a distance, is her pants. They are down to the middle of her butt, which I can see along with her underwear.
To-go is here to stay. ...fewer huge restaurants: higher dollars...in smaller spaces. ...all marginal restaurants will fail. ...fewer mediocre restaurants...
...value will lead the hit list... ...guests will simply have to...give up...eating in restaurants.
...QR codes...M&A activity...
...carry-away cocktails... ...-Tock, Toast-... ...virtual cocktails and appetizers... - Westword Bites 2021
Saturday. Another flat on the way to work. This one close to work. And I'm early, with plans to get breakfast before work. Third flat in six days. Eight days ago I had both tubes go flat. I had those replaced the following Sunday. The rear one lasted until Wednesday, and the tube they replaced that one with lasted until this morning. I suspect it may be my brand new rear tire, which feels thin just to ride on, as if I can feel the stress on my rear rim from inside and out. I won't be working out after work this afternoon, but instead yet again heading back to the sporting goods supercenter. I want to know, without taking off the tube on the side of the road, if it's indeed another puncture. Or if it's somehow an issue with the valve. I get out my hand pump, which to date has not remedied any flats I've had since I got it. Along comes a silver SUV, with a guy who has a grey buzz cut. he wants to know if I'm okay and if I have what I need. He's driving out of this cul de sac, and he's back a few short minutes later. My hand pump has made zero progress on the tire. Again he wants to know if there's anything I need. Did he actually go anywhere or just take the car for a spin early on a Saturday morning? I don't recall the last time a vehicle stopped for the homeless, without a driver who worked for a cleaning crew or municipal agency. So, after work, I'm sitting on the polished stone floor of the supercenter. I'm dozing off when a customer's ski tips over and lands in front of me, jerking me awake. The tech tells me that my new rear tire is worn out. Until I tell him it's brand new, he asks me how old it is and says it ain't a good brand. I tell him it came recommended by a previous tech here. He also tells me that the tubes with sealant they carry, the only ones available right now, ain't the best either. he also says he's noticed me in here a lot and they want to get me hooked up. Well, you know, as long as I have the money to burn. He goes off shift and another tech spends the next hour seating a new tube inside the liner and a new and better tire. He asks me where I'm riding, that I'm having so many flats. I feel like telling him, in lieu of not riding BMX parks, that I ride on the ground. Technically, this is the problem.
...when we wake up together outside [we] put on...coffee. Next, I pop open the galley on my homebuilt, teardrop trailer "Frida" and fire up the Coleman stove... ...my friends emerging from their tents... - REI co-op 2021 Christmas catalog
Wednesday. On the street with the open field, recently swept of campers, there are now a camper and a couple of trailers. And a homeless guy in a truck. The following morning, his face will be planted against the steering wheel, asleep. I'm coming home from work, late, down a street a block from my own. It's the one with the smattering of campers. Behind one, on an empty lot, someone has a hibachi grill going. Sparks are drifting off in the wind and onto the grass. In between the smattering of campers on this long street, road construction equipment is parked along the curb. The following day on the way to work, one block of the long street a block from mine is be closed of for construction. A camper is inside the construction zone. At work, our guy who stops in twice a week to repair and clean shoes wants me to try his electric bike. The boost switch is interesting. I think of it as cheating, but who knows how long I can keep up my commute by human-power. Friday I'm working for my coworker. This will put me at 40 hours for the week. I've been staying after close to finish the increase in work, and this week I did so on Wednesday. Which puts me into overtime. I don't know what the owner will have to say about it. The manager is aware. My reconnecting with a girlfriend who broke up with me, or rather he seeking me out, is a circumstance which continues to unveil itself in unexpected mayhem. Last Sunday we went out to a local deathburger, where I recall she told me about a Halloween party the following Wednesday. At work, she was sending me messages on Messenger, asking me where to pick me up from work. I assumed she was coming to get me from work that day. Then she sends me messages telling me she won't be there until two and a half hours or more after I close, and that she has to stop at home first right when I go to bed. I reply that I'm confused. the following morning, she sends me another message that she wants to go to the party...that evening, and will pick me up at home. I realize my mistake and elect to take the train home to get there sooner. I arrive home five minutes before I hear her tiny little car horn. If I hadn't heard the horn once before, I never would have known it was her, or that she was even there. It's the quietest car horn I've ever heard. I thought we were going to a party at her work, and I ask her why we are headed the opposite direction. The party is for her karate class. Along the way, she doesn't recall mentioning Wednesday, and she explains that the date of the party is in an email she still has on her home computer. I hadn't had dinner, and she had only a single chimichanga all day, and we headed straight for the food. It was a fun spectacle, with kids running out of the room with the haunted house, screaming somehow even louder than kids ever do at the waterpark. A date with her is always like an amusement park ride.
Friday morning's ride to work is in the dark, as I'm working open to close today. On the trail, I'm just across a bridge at a playground. I pass a homeless cyclist I can't see, but he says a single word or makes a noise I can't make out. I recognize his voice. i passed him once before and he spoke the exact same thing. I get to work early to grab breakfast in the shopping center. All the way down and onto the connecting trail, I'm coming past the waterpark. A guy in a black full length wool coat and scarf is pulling a rolling suitcase. He doesn't look homeless. Toward the end of the trail, another guy is walking the trail in the dark. He's also dressed in black, pants and T-shirt and knit cap. He alerts me to someone laying on the trail ahead. At work, I can't get over how quickly ten hours go past. Today and tomorrow, when I actually leave work in shorts, appear to be the last temperate days of the year according to the forecast. On my ride home late this afternoon, I approach another rollerblader. We're moving along the big golf course at this end of my commute, and her significant other shadows her on his bicycle. Not long after I pass them, I hear her gaining on me down a hill. I turn onto a wooden bridge, where I accelerate across and lose them.
The month comes to a close when, after four hours of sleep on Friday night, I get a good night's rest Saturday night. I wake up Sunday still feeling as if I don't want to get out on my bike. I have nothing to do today anyhow. I take a couple of buses over to a supermarket, where I pick up some groceries I can't get at my usual place. It's not until the cashier checks me out that I ask her if she charged me for the bag, which she did. State law as of this summer. I mention that I didn't want a bag, and she hands me a dime. I take it to customer service and ask that they put it bank onto my card. The clerk suggests that the service fee will be more than the dime, but the point is to reduce plastic recycling. And there is a national coin shortage. Somewhere in the balance, virtue is a victim. I get back home and decide to pay a visit to an old friend and former coworker, within walking distance. I always wanted to hang out when she greets kids at her door on Halloween. I'm not there long when I return home. My next door neighbor and our HOA president rings my bell. He has Halloween cookies his sister baked. She has her own home business. I don't remember such a Halloween.
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