February 2022, My Two-Day Zombie Death Virus, Mass-Murderers Don't Wear Windbreakers, and "Shackled by LUST? JESUS Sets Free."

     I'm at work.  The flakes have begun to come down.  Closing time approaches.  I check our drop box and find an order to be processed.  The work takes me past closing time.  I rush over to the pharmacy in the shopping center.  The dental specialist who cleaned my teeth, suggested I begin using an electric toothbrush, suggests I change it out every three months.  My trip to the pharmacy, which takes its self-perceived groovyness quite seriously, is where I want to inquire about electric toothbrushes with brush heads which can be changed out.  ...and it turns out that they don't carry electric toothbrushes.  I suspect that this is a product which is simply not groovy enough.  It's close enough to the arrival of my bus, which is tempting as the flakes are beginning to collect on the streets, that I decide to go with the transit system once again this evening.  I have a few minutes before I must be out at the stop.  I sneak into the bakery where I am several times a day.  I converse with a 16-year-old employee.  She tells me she saw me on the way home one Saturday.  (?!)  How is this possible?  Oh, well...  The plain and simple fact is, she and her family sometimes ride from her home (which appears to be several miles east, by the interstate) all the way here and beyond, to the trail.  They then ride all the freaking way to the end of the trail which goes to the northern corner of downtown.  From there, they ride to a transit hub where they catch the train home again.  The following day is the sister's birthday.  I elect, because of temperatures and falling snow, not to ride today.  I'm on my last bus to work when we pick up a passenger.  The high today is forecast to be 17 degrees F.  This guy has no coat or jacket, but only a plaid long sleeved shirt.  he tells the driver he's getting out at my stop.  So, he asks the driver, be sure to let him know when the stop comes up.  He informs the driver right where he will be sitting.  My ride to work from the station ain't a long one, and soon the sign comes up for the street where my stop is.  The passenger jumps up.  "This is it, bud," he tells the driver, who explains to him that the actual stop is past the intersection.  We both exit the bus.  I follow him as he goes past the breakfast place where I'm headed.  He appears to be cold as he marches along.  He disappears.

     On Wednesday, the flakes began to come down while I was at work.  The ride in during the late morning was fine.  But by closing time, I made the decision that it would be too dangerous to ride on top of accumulating snow, beneath which may be ice I could not necessarily see.  And I don't expect anything to melt because today and tomorrow are temps below freezing.  So, I elect to take the transit system home today, and to work and home again the following day as well.  It's a decision for which I am disappointed in myself.  I don't recall being dissuaded by inclement weather last winter.  I am however interested in not falling on my ass.  On Friday, the temps are up, the ride in is fine.  But I stay late and it's too tempting to take the transit system home again, as I leave just as the bus will be here.  The evening before, I arrived at the station for my last bus home.  At the bus gate was a passenger who verbally complained about the bus being late.  he spoke so fast I couldn't understand him.  This evening, he's back again.  This time, he first shouts.  Then he yells about the bus being late "EVERY NIGHT!"  Just before it arrives, he comes over where I'm sitting on the ground.  He asks if I'm "alright?  You look depressed."  A few minutes earlier, I was watching a young guy carrying some kind of appliance in a box, perhaps a microwave.  I watched him do one complete circumnavigation of the entire station's perimeter before coming onboard my bus when it arrives.

     I take Tuesday, of the fooling week, off.  I have two appointments which I hope to kill with one day off.  The first is at noon.  Just up the street is the place where I got my taxes done last year.  And I'm headed back there today.  After lunch at my age old deathburger, I'm walking past a bus stop which I frequented early in the morning for a good seven years.  I worked for another company, on an opening shift.  Plenty of stories about this corner.  Just the other day (last weekend?) a big pickup truck with a husband and wife inside literally came up onto the curb of this corner, while making a U-turn.  This late morning, oncoming traffic is turning left   I watch as, along with the vehicles, a lone tire rolls down the avenue by itself.  It doesn't bother any of the cars as it makes its way faithfully downhill.  It hits a patch of snow and topples to a stop on the sidewalk.  It could be the lowest carbon footprint I've yet to see.  Minutes later, I arrive at the tax place.  It's a neighborhood low-income resource center.  In my case, "low" means under $66,000 annual income.  Way under.  Last year, it appeared that random volunteers were scanning documents for clients.  That's another story.  This year, the first thing I notice about most of the staff is that they all are wearing black tactical boots and black tactical pants, and Polo shirts.  patches on the shirts read "Americorps."  Okay.  One of these staffers puts information from my documents into a computer program.  After an hour, the program tells us that this year's federal refund is nonexistent, and I actually owe the government $86.  Hmm, WTF?  I use a staff supervisor's phone to call my broker.  It appears I had capital gains from the sale of some stock, which I don't understand.  It's a retirement fund, and everything should get reinvested.  The supervisor spots a stock "sale" on my 1099-DIV.  I suddenly have an inkling of what may be up but didn't expect.  I will have to speak with my broker.  The supervisor mentions that I may have been moved into a higher tax bracket.  I ask him if he has a record of this happening.  He tells me that the company who did my taxes last year is a different one from his, and he wouldn't know.  So much for my tax preparer's knowledge of my taxes.  He sure is convinced, however, that I had stock which was sold.  An office manager comes in and hands everyone COVID-19 test kits...including me.  I bid the Americorps kids goodbye and walk back down the street to home, where I set up a phone appointment with my broker.  I will write a check to the Treasury for $86 and put it in the mail when I return home.  It sounds as if it could be property tax in the board game Monopoly.

     I'm then out on my bike to a check-up with my doctor.  I get to one building on the campus and am told to go upstairs.  There, I'm told to go to another building, and that patients are mistakenly sent up here all the time.  On the way back down, I stop into the cafeteria.  It closes at 2 PM and it's now after 3:30. I head toward the other building.  On the way, I ask a pair of women entering a different building where my own building is.  They ignore me, as hospital campus employees here usually do.  I follow them inside and ask a receptionist, who gives me a map.  I arrive at the correct building.  Inside, there are no directions where to go. I go to the second floor, where another receptionist acknowledges there are no directions on the first floor, because "everything is so new."  (?) She spots me standing a mere inch from a sign which reads "wait here," and she laughs.  This one has a sense of humor.  (Makes me wonder what she's doing working here?)  I am in the "green" wing of the second floor.  I need to go right across the hall, to the "burgundy" wing. The receptionist over there tells me to stand back behind the plexiglass.  Fight the power.  I soon see my doctor, who ends up giving me more resources than I've ever had.  I have a number to call for diet and exercise information.  And she personally hooks me up with my own social worker, to help me navigate Medicaid.  She's amazing.  I tell her that, if I lose my Medicaid at the end of this month, I won't see her again as I will have to pursue regular health insurance again, and I've loved having her as my PCP.  I'm outta there, down to Subway for a dinner salad, to a supermarket to grab a few groceries, and then home again.

     Thursday after work.  I'm climbing a hill off the block with the campers along an open field.  I'm hard pressed to remember at this point when the last time I was able to switch back and forth across the street, to aid my ascent, without crossing fields of ice.  The following morning, the last vestiges of ice and snow appear to be on their way out.  I've been wondering about the location of a former homeless camp, not at the guard rail.  This one was in a cul de sac without any homes built.  I detour on my way to work.  Last time I was past here (a good year ago?) the place had been swept clean.  This morning, it remains free of any habitation.  Also, there are now street signs which declare the property under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation.  Interesting.  At work, I get my scheduled call from my new broker.  Though he doesn't see any amount of taxable capital gains on my 1099-DIV large enough to make my federal refund vanish, he does want to get together to discuss moving the investments I have with taxable capital gains.  He suggests moving them out of my fund with taxable investments into the one which isn't taxable.  He also teases me with the opinion that my former brokers didn't do such a good job setting me up with "what you need," he says.  On the way home after work, I'm approaching the damaged guardrail, site of the former homeless camp.  A big tarp is attached to a chain link fence.  Under the tarp is a tent.  Near the road is a wheelchair.  The camp is back!

     Friday.  Coming to work down the block with the campers along the open field.  The "Turkey Time" camper is gone.   But at the damaged guardrail, the tent under the tarp is still there.  But I can see dark clouds coming over the Rockies.  The ice has practically gone and the previous snow has almost melted.  What now?  I'm at work when the flakes begin coming down mid-afternoon.  At closing time, the street appears only now to be collecting snow.  I know there's no ice underneath any new snowfall, so I decide to ride it.  Before I even make it to the trailhead, it's coming down and piling up.  Though it's slow going through a gathering amount, the going is steady.  This newest bike of mine, a little over a year old, has a particular quirk.  In snowfall, cold, or both.  It doesn't want to come out of high gear.  I make the decision not to use the high gears when it's snowing.  I round a bend just before the underpass for the train, and not far from the connecting trail.  A couple is playing with their dog out in the snowfall.  The guy is one of these in shorts over leggings and a bright-colored waterproof shell.  He makes the observation, "It's not warm."  I mention my preference for warmth, to which he replies, "We're 1,000 miles from Florida."  Okay you swinign' guys, stay hip.  My clear safety glasses are fogging up, which keeps the snow out of my eyes.  After removing them, I can only tip my helmet forward so the visor cuts the oncoming flakes.  Along the river, past the junk "recycling" yard and the golf course, I'm past a big outdoor mall and over a bridge.  I'm approaching an underpass with at least a couple of figures underneath.  I ever so slowly descend toward them, one standing and the other kneeling on the ground.  I pass them and the one standing, and old guy, says "Whazzup?  Y'okay?"  He says something else I can't decipher as I climb out the other side.  As always, I react as I suspect anyone in civilization would, as opposed to anyone disconnected from it. I don't reply, as if I'm unsure our relationship is, or if we have one, and why he's checking on my own wellbeing.  He's the second street guy this month to inquire about my state of mind.  The standard homeless script would be to respond to me with the ethereal, "Sorry for being nice."  The only other voice I hear is the kneeling figure, a female.  I can't make her out.

     The trip home takes me about two and a half hours, an hour longer than over clear streets.  I decide to go to bed early, to get up early, with as much time as possible to get to work.  Saturdays I open at 9 AM.  It's still snowing when I hit the hay.  I get up indeed early and the snow has ceased.  I check bus schedules, and I elect to attempt the trail.  The streets have snow and ice, but I can ride.  On a long downhill, I walk over a long stretch of ice.  When I hit the trail, the first few yards are unplowed, and ridable in low gear.  I assume the entire trail is this way.  A few yards along is a ramp from an underpass.  A plow has cleared the ramp and down the trail ahead.  In fact, I will pass the plow ahead, coming back the other way.  I pass a second plow.  The trail ain't bad at all.  The underpass with the pair of homeless from last night shows no habitation this morning.  I turn onto the connecting trail to work which has also been plowed, and I pass a third plow.  I make it to a dog park as the sun is about to rise, and this is where the plowed trail stops.  I ride through a good amount of snow, I will hear at work that it was some ten inches, and dismount to climb a hill.  I elect to exit the trail for the streets and make my way fairly well through tire wipes.  I'm down an otherwise busy avenue and around a few corners, when I arrive at a horse trail.  This is the quickest route to work sans any moisture.  The ten inches are here.  I downshift and am able to slowly make my way to the street.  With the sun making its way into the sky, it's a beautiful scene.  Falling snow comes down in clouds, through which the sun comes in rays, with blue sky behind.  I make it to work just about three hours since leaving the house.  Just enough time for breakfast in the shopping center.  The sun comes out and the temps rise above freezing.  And I've never seen so much snow melt so fast.  Saturdays we close at 3 PM.  Some ten hours ago, I rode across streets of ice and exited a trail with close to a foot of snow.  The streets and the trail are now almost void of snow and ice.  I took a gamble that the unplowed section of trail would get plowed, and it has.  I go flying along my route to the gym and get there as fast as if it never snowed.

     Superbowl Sunday.  I got a workout in, grocery shopping, laundry, and dishes all done yesterday.  Today, after lunch with the sister, I'm taking my oldest bike into the sporting goods supercenter.  The brake pads are worn or the cables are stretched.  My sister has a target date of May 1st when she must be moved out of her home of I don't how many years.  I won't be pedaling a path this way to wherever her door ends up.  During lunch, we watch a streaming documentary about a climber.  He describes climbing through rock, snow, and ice.  I tell the sister how this sounds like my commute this week.  After lunch, I elect to take the short ride to the bus, which soon scoops me up and hauls me to a train, which takes me to the end of one line and I am shortly at the bike repair department.  I always expect to have to leave my bike here.  It turns out to be the brake pads.  The tech has new ones on in 20 minutes.  It's such a beautiful day outside I decide to ride home.  Tomorrow is the first Monday of a new schedule, in which i will be opening for my coworker every other Monday   And, when I get home, I have a Valentine's Day date with a lady I reconnected with last summer.  This week, I should go in for blood work.  Thursday I have an appointment with my new financial advisor.

     I'm at work Wednesday afternoon when the flakes again begin coming down.  After work, I run over to a grocery in the shopping center.  I come out close to the time the bus comes along.  I decide to take it this late afternoon and see what the streets are like tomorrow.  I'm soon aboard, and it isn't long before we're behind an accident.  We creep up to a stop and pick up some passengers.  One lets the driver know that the back-up is long.  Another is commenting on motorists who "don't know how to drive."  She remarks, "There's emergency vehicles, and ambulance..."  I don't recall the last time I was stuck on a bus in traffic.  Ever.  I contemplate getting out at the next stop which we creep up to, and riding to another bus or train, or home.  But I don't know what the ride will be like on what's already come down, and continues to come down.  And I would have to continue north past one major avenue, down a hill and across a second avenue and climb again to reach a second one, all before I could even think about turning west toward home.  I have no idea if the trail has been plowed.  And it's nice and warm...and dry inside the bus.  We've made it up to the accident.  I decide to wait and see what happens.  The driver puts it in park and gets out to have a word with a traffic officer.  He returns and waits.  Beyond a single police cruiser, there isn't much left of the scene.  An officer is going to each of a handful of vehicles in front of us.  He sticks his head through our door to tell us the wait will be another ten to fifteen minutes.  We get going in only five.  It's been an hour since I stepped onboard.  I will simply make the same connections I would have, an hour later.  At the gate for my last bus home is a grey-haired guy.  He has a cane and wears a cap reminiscent of folk singers during the 1960.  He's smoking in the bs shelter, and I have to stick my head out into the blowing flakes.  AS the bus pulls up, he says to me, "Those bike tires must be slippery in the snow."  When we get on the bus, he asks for a mask from the driver because, he says, his broke.

     Thursday.  I decide to ride the transit system to work.  A quick breakfast in the shopping center, into the pharmacy for muscle ointment for my neck which has been hurting since I left work yesterday, and the into a coffee shop.  Here, I get a hot chocolate and sit at a table.  I floss my teeth as discreetly as possible.  If I don't do it now, I won't have the time.  I break open the ointment.  Then I spend the next hour with my new broker.  He shares my own impression that my previous broker is young, and tells me some things which he says other brokers don't ever explain.  He mentions that not all brokers come from a brokerage background.  We dig into my portfolio.  He tells me he's hands on, and it sure sounds like it.  We talk investments and portfolio structure as I don't recall doing with my previous brokers.  He tells me that I appear to understand some basic strategy about using a down market as an investment opportunity, which even older clients of his appear to not fathom.  I leave there with the impression that my mutual retirement account is in the hands of someone who wants it to perform.

     Something else happened Wednesday.  I began to feel my neck getting sore, as if I pulled a muscle.  Which is what I thought I did.  By Friday, I got up and rode to work, and all day the entire back of my neck was sore.  My sore neck was interfering with other muscles I tried to use.  It hurt to lift my arms above my head, or even from a plate to my mouth.  When I swallowed, my throat didn't hurt.  My neck muscles would feel a stab of pain and interfered with my swallowing.  My neck hurt simply standing and holding my head.  Also, I had plenty of sleep the night before, but I was dead tired.  I had little appetite.  I was like some kind of pain zombie.  What is this shit all about?  I feel bad enough that I accept an offer from the general manager to give me a ride home.  I had a couple nights of a painful neck trying to find a position on my pillow where I would get some relief.  In spite of this, I got plenty of sleep.  And I still felt dead tired at work.  Saturday, I felt as if I wanted to lay down on the floor and go to sleep.  Enen though I went to work Saturday because i thought I felt a little better.  I shouldn't have worked wither day, but I'm glad I managed to make it through.  Saturday morning, out of nowhere, I have a new symptom when I think I may be on the mend from the ridiculously sore neck.  I have blood coming out of my butt.  It's not mixed with my stool, but appears independently.  Saturday, I made my way by transit system alone.  Overnight, I get nine hours of sleep, and I awake in disbelief of how much better I feel.  As fast as it came on, it's on the wane.  Including the blood.  What a crazy fucking two days.

     Sunday.  I am effectively out of the two-day fog of neck pain, lack of appetite and energy, and desire to lay down on the ground.  The blood is gone, as if it was never here.  My appetite is playing catch up today, and after lunch with the sister I'm at a diner along the way to grab a couple of special grocery items.  I felt so bad the past two days, I can't believe I'm watching myself pick up a bike made of steel instead of lighter composite, much less put it on a rack on a bus.  This crosstown bus is a time-saver to the sister's place, a direct route I recently stumbled upon, and not a bad idea if I want to avoid overdoing the distance I ride today.  I've enjoyed riding over to her place, mostly which I done after our mom passed, as she used to come and pick us up all the time.  But she and her husband, and the dog, need to be out of their place of several years as of May 1st.  I've just taken the same bus back crosstown all the way to a diner I sometimes frequent this way.  It's a franchise and doesn't serve Hispanic cuisine.  But I walk in today and most of the clientele, as well as all the employees, are Spanish speaking.  Mexican music wafts from the kitchen.  I believe that this place, though it's located at an intersection with a busy highway and a busy avenue, is most of the time not busy at all.  So on a day like today, right around noon with strange February temps in the sixties F, the big parking lot has a lot of cars.  The place isn't full but I don't think the staff is used to larger crowds.  Service is slow.  I take the time and freshly cleared head to pause and look out of the big windows.  It ain't like I don't know the neighborhood.  Directly across the street is an empty lot, favored by the homeless.  At one point, they had occupied the lot of this place with tents and a camper.  Today, a large tarp hangs off a high concrete wall running the back of the lot.  Above is a big marijuana dispensary and another warehouse.  Behind the tarp is the outline of one tent and a sign of a possible second one.  The other end of the tarp covers half of a third tent.  Next to this is a shopping cart and a line of trash bags.  I watch a young homeless couple, the female pushing a walker piled with stuff, cross the opposite intersection.  Out in our intersection, a juggler in the standard vest tosses pins into the air.  For a handful of years, jugglers have been sharing this intersection with panhandlers.  This is the only corner in the metro area I'm aware of with jugglers on a regular basis.  Back across the street, the homeless couple are passing under a train bridge.  Up along the tracks is a very small billboard.  It reads, "Shackled by LUST?  JESUS Sets Free."

     After my meal, I can't believe I feel well enough to ride over to my weekend yogurt place.  Along the way, I grab the few groceries.  I end up riding all the way back home.  The brief death virus kept me from shopping for the rest of my groceries, so I head that way after get back home.  Across from the supermarket is a department store.  I really need a new windbreaker, or shell, for the days when the temps are too high for a winter coat.  The one I have is actually an emergency rain shell, which is too bad because I otherwise love everything about it.  But it's already falling apart.  I first hit the department store.  Into the parking lot pulls a car which appears to have been a police cruiser from 10 or 20 years ago.  It still has the spotlight.  Tacked onto the driver side mirror is a small US flag.  I will later see this same vehicle the following evening after work.  I will be approaching my home when I will see it going down my street, still with its tiny flag.  Tuesday.  The cold temps and small flakes began blowing in just as I left work yesterday.  The small flakes continued overnight and into this morning.  The streets really are not bad, but I decide to grab a bus to a train.  It should save me time as I need to deposit my greatly reduced income tax refund at the bank.  If I can get to a branch closer to work, rather than the one just down the street from where I live, it will give me more time to navigate whatever ends up being on the ground.  They both open at the same time, but this morning I have enough time that I should get there when they open.  I look at the clock.  The bus to the train will be here soon and I may as well take it.  The train will drop me a short ride from the bank.  It's cold and the small flakes are drifting in the wind.  I walk my bike to the stop and park it before I take a few steps back to the corner, where I can see down the street any approaching bus.  On the other corner is a guy who is coughing, and smoking.  He also waits for something or someone.  He may be a resident of the Section 8 housing behind him and also waiting for my bus.  My vision is still pretty good.  From years of experience, I can recognize a transit system bus from quite a distance.  It has more widely spaced headlights and a bar of orange lights against a blackface, just above the windshield.  The lights spell out the route and destination.  I spot it and head back to the stop.  Indeed the figure on the other corner comes across and makes his way to the stop.  The bus comes to a halt and he climbs the steps as I put my bike on the rack.  I follow as the driver is telling him, "I'll let you on this time, but next time you need three dollars."  He responds with something I don't make out.  I lean in and tell the driver, "Everyone has a story."

     The bus adventures continue after work.  I end up staying late and the bus will soon arrive.  And, as usual, the snow is beginning to accumulate on the street.  I take the bus, to the train, to the station for a last bus home.  I've missed the usual one, but another will be along in 20 minutes.  I could ride from here, but on the bus I won't have to deal with getting snowed on.  I step off the train.  Under a shelter on the platform are a couple of old drunks.  One is telling the other about a bus which, upon its marque, announces it's "going back to the garage," he complains.  It's 11 degrees F this evening and headed downward.  Not only is this guy in just a hoodie, but it's unzipped.  Yes, I'm familiar enough during these weeks of snowfall with the schedule of buses which come through here about this time.  If I arrive at this station soon enough after work, I see the first bus which comes at the end of its day, and heads back to the garage.  I walk to the gate for my bus back home, and the pair follow.  It soon pulls up and the observant drunk is ahead of me getting onboard.  He's slowly digging through every pocket he can remember he has.  He claims he can't feel his hands.  The driver asks him if he's looking for his transfer.  He doesn't respond.  The driver asks him the same question two more times.   He's confused at the question.  The driver suggests he have a seat and search for his transfer there.  The guy wouldn't be true to himself if he was anything less than holistically confused.  The driver attempts to explain to him, "I'm just giving you another option (to standing here and researching every pocket.)"  The guy smiles and says, "You want me to shut the fuck up, huh?"  "No, I'm not saying that," the driver responds.  I don't know what the transit system can offer new drivers to put up with this kind of tangled overgrowth of pathos.  He elects to shuffle to a seat.  Of course he never finds any transfer, which may or may not have ever existed.  His friend is another story.  His friend suddenly exclaims that, just before the bus arrived, he called his brother for a ride.  He yells at the driver, as if this is a bar instead of a city bus, to keep an eye out for a car.  Soon the driver yells back that a car has materialized.  His fiend bids him farewell, or whatever the drunk equivalent is.  It doesn't appear that his friend's brother has invited him along.  Perhaps, as far as his friend's brother is concerned, he can 'shut the fuck up.'  Blood is thicker than alcohol.  The short trip down the avenue is otherwise uneventful.  Along the way, he pulls the cord to signal his desire to exit at the next stop.  He takes a step out of the door and exclaims, "Shit..." before he comes back inside.  The first thing which appears to shock him is the presence of snow.  He asks for the next stop.  At the next stop, same thing with another "Shit..."  He asks for the next stop after this one.  And indeed, the third "Shit!" is the charm.  He's out.  After which, it' almost as if...he's shut the fuck up.

     Wednesday and Thursday, I cover my coworker's shift as well as my own.  Both days, I get a ride in to work from my boss.  Wednesday, I get a ride home from our shoe guy who stays until close.  I haven't been out on the trail since Tuesday morning.  The snow has been lightly drifting in off and on over three days.  Though I haven't been out riding, the streets appear as if they can be traversed.  On Thursday's ride in, I mention to my boss that I' recently took a look on the website of another company for which I put in a little over six years.  Some 20 years ago, they had about 15 locations around the metro area.  They are down to three of four stores, plus a plant.  Just about the same size as us.  It's not that I don't understand what has happened so brutally to my industry post-pandemic.  The joke around my place of employment is the parade of weekly new customers coming through our door, of which there is no end in sight.  But my history with my old place of employment gives me a lens which I cannot remove.  If they can hang on for just a couple more years, they will reach their centennial.  The owner of my company purchased another, much smaller 100-year-old company, for its plant to replace the one we were losing.  The current owner of my old gig took the company over from his dad.  It was the first company where I became a store manager.  The company hired a coworker for me, and I came to believe at the time that we were the best customer service team anywhere, anytime.  That's another story.  One day right after New Year's I was let go, and for some reason to discover some fifteen years after we first met that she had stayed with the company, I was surprised.  I had just assumed she had left.  I got a call at work from her, at work, and she didn't expect to hear my voice which she immediately recognized.  I suppose that we have just been in this business too long.  She was working in the neighborhood I had moved out of, and i went to go see her one day before a dentist appointment.  Her husband, though he was making six figures, still couldn't afford to stay in what is perhaps the most expensive neighborhood in the metro area.  She has a twin sister who was also working for the same company.  As they had been there so long, they were the go-to employees for training new hires.  Both sisters and husbands are very close, and all four made the decision to move out of state.  This would have left the company without their most experienced employees.  Their exodus was, I think, just before the pandemic.  On the trip to work early Thursday morning, my boss told me that he saw online, the company she and I worked for is up for sale.  I don't know for how long.  He and I have discussed that company before and he's mentioning it only now.  Perhaps this year it went up for sale.  I wouldn't call the management of that company friends of the service-seeking customers.  I'm sure they will have squeezed every drop of blood from their company before they hand it off, if someone bites.

Two Tales of One Windbreaker

     The weekend before the last one of this month, I went into my neighborhood Walmart.  I had previously, sometime last year, picked up one of those emergency rain suits.  I had been using the top half as a windbreaker on the days when it was too warm to ride in my winter coat.  I loved this thing, but it was designed for minimal use only.  By last weekend, it had come to be made more of duct and packing tape than its original material, due to the various and sundry tears which accumulated.  The time had come for a real windbreaker, or "shell" as it's referred to in the cycling biz.  I took a look in Walmart and didn't see any.  I asked an employee with a badge which reads "coach."  She asked me if I looked already.  I said I did...and I asked her if she is aware...as an employee...if they have any.  You feel me?  She acted as if this was thoroughly unexpected.  She checked her phone, told me the only windbreakers in the metro area were at another Walmart, wished me good luck, and walked away.  You go, coach!  Anti-coach?  Repressed mass-murderer?  If she does end up being the next Lee Harvey Oswald, you can bet she won't be caught dead in any windbreakers.  Today is Sunday, and I am doing lunch with and helping pack up her home with the sister.  Good news.  They found a place to move.  Though it is in a nearby town and not as close to the big city.  After lunch and a bit of packing I headover to a sporting goods store in her neighborhood.  I was actually headed for Target and stumbled upon this place.  As soon as I walked in I saw windbreakers on display.  I told the clerk that, for $75, this had better be some fantastic windbreaker.  She claimed, "People are buying these, because they like them."  Good enough for me.  And they are on sale for $68.  Another problem solved.  I put the old windbreaker in a trash can by the front door, for some potential mass-murderer who needs it more than I do.

January 2022, "Peace, Man," Twenty Gunshots At My Townhome, and Funeral For The Breakfast King

      New Year's Day.  Or, if you like, NYD.  The snow has continued overnight, having dumped six inches.  I elect to take the bus to the supermarket.  My connections are ship shape.  Groceries back home, I find that a different Chinese restaurant is open today.  This one is behind the Vietnamese one.  On NYD, I'm sitting and eating lemon chicken, watching a cable channel in Chinese.  Four days later.  I arrive at work to be told that the forecast is for snow today...just when I am going home.  The flurries begin about an hour before I'm out of the door.  An hour later, the streets are already covered with a layer of flakes.  Wouldn't you know, I left my safety glasses at home.  I usually carry them just in case...it snows.  They keep the blowing and stinging snow out of my eyes.  It turns out somehow to not be so bad.  I try and use my headlamp to somehow spot imaginary clues to any ice under the new snow.  When I get home, I won't be able to find them.  I take it very slow as I don't know where the damned ice is.  I'm almost through the old money neighborhood, headed to the end of a cul de sac, at the end of which is a path to another boulevard.  Just before I enter the cul de sac, the tires slip and throw me toward the front.  It's a funny step by step collapse, and I land with a thud.  It takes me a second or two to get my footing as I stand up, and I'm back on the bike.  All the good my headlamp did.  I ask myself how many more spills like this I can keep getting up from.  This month's issue of Colorado Parent has an article about children biking to work in the winter.  It appears to be authored by the developer of bicycling clothes.  I'm surprised at anyone who suggests children bike to school in 25 degree F weather.  But the article's advice about wet surfaces as better to ride on than frozen shiny ones is sound enough.  And what it mentions about the need for a bigger fitting helmet to accommodate warmer headgear is something else I found out for myself this season.  I take most of the first trail slowly.  I don't run into any more hidden ice.  When I hit the connecting trail, I open up the gears.  It feels as though it may be letting up.  The snow is beginning to spread across the trail in drifts.  When I exit the trail, it appears that the new snow has covered up the old slippery spots, and given them traction.  It has yet to be covered in sand or churned into tire ruts.  Though I didn't hear the forecast and didn't put any boots on when I left, my two pairs of socks under my sneakers are keeping my feet warm. It takes me an extra 40 minutes to get home.  The next morning, I decide that I don't have an extra forty minutes to play with on my way to work.  I run out of the door with the bike to catch a bus.  I put on the last pair of new sunglasses which I haven't managed to lose.  They are fogging up and I take them off.  I hang them on the brake cables on my handlebars.  When I get to the bus stop, they are gone.  I take the bus home again and retrace my steps under the streetlight.  I'm unsuccessful in finding them.  I left my bike at work as I stayed close to the time the bus comes along, and I'm not sure what shape the roads are in.  And the boss called and asked me to open tomorrow.  As he will give me a ride to work, it makes no sense to take my bike home on the bus only to take it back again in his van.

     In the middle of the week, the sister comes home from her two-month stay at the recovery center.  A biopsy has revealed no local infection.  Next month, if some weeks without antibiotics reveals still no infection, she will be on track for surgery.  Now, is it on Friday?  It gets up to 63 freaking degrees F.  The vast majority of the snow has melted by my ride home.  The following morning is a usual Saturday ride before sunrise.  I'm stopped at the trailhead, having decided to change from gloves to warmer mittens.  Someone enters the trail in a hoodie and no helmet.  I think it's too cold for less than my long-sleeved shirt, hoodie and windbreaker (of, if you prefer, "shell.")  I proceed down the trail in the dark.  The sun will be up soon enough and I conserve my headlamp battery, which always appears to run down before I know it.  I notice a dark figure ahead.  It's the cyclist.  They are stopped in their lane, on the phone.  Sunday.  I confirmed by phone that the film I dropped off before Christmas has been ready...who knows how long.  I don't ask.  Yesterday, I went to the gym after work, for the first time since I dropped off my last roll of film.  Today, all I have to do is pick up the prints.  I take the bus to the supermarket, and on the way home, a couple of long familiar local street guys get on.  I hear them speak to a guy in a wheelchair.  One tells the guy that they both went to prison together.  The other one tells the guy that they both got out together.  I must still be recovering from a cold and don't have the energy I usually do.  I ride to a stop for a crosstown bus.  This drops me at a corner with a short ride to the camera shop.  I'm back in a neighborhood where I lived for some sixteen years, before I moved to my current one, where I've lived almost as long.  My boss just drove me down this street a couple of days ago, taking me to open my store.  I pointed out various establishments, a movie theater here and a restaurant there, which are now completely different buildings.  I grab the photos and ride to a shopping mall, just down the street from where I used to live, for some yogurt.  From there, I ride back across town.  I'm headed down a street full of brownstones.  I'm going off the street, up onto sidewalks to avoid snow still on the street, and back onto the street again where it's clear.  I also have to dodge people and couples who have all decided to come out and walk their dogs.  I ride back to a supermarket which I frequent, for one particular product my regular supermarket doesn't carry.  I've checked out and am headed to the exit.  I spot a homeless guy bring in a bicycle.  He lays it down at a corner with a newsstand, upside down before he removes the front rim.  I watch him as he leaves the bike there and carries the rim with him down toward the other end of the supermarket.  (?)   My bus transfer is still good and I grab a bus back to my neighborhood.

     I was waiting until the end of the following week, next payday, before I take my newest bike in for a tune up.  But on Monday, I can tell that my brake cables are again stretched out.  The brake lever on the left handlebar provides no brakes at all.  I just don't think I should be riding it until I get it tuned.  I turn to the bike I rode to work and back, before I had my newest one.  It's the one which spent three months of last Spring being refitted.  It had troubles: a nail through a tire and tube, broken spokes on the back rim, a worn cassette, low brake fluid.  I'm not sure that was all.  But on Tuesday, I'm back out on the thing.  It runs like a dream.  Instead of rattling, it freaking whispers.  The shifters are smooth as butter.  The frame feels solid as a rock.  It's a pleasure to ride.  I need my newest bike to be like this again.  I plan to take it in this weekend.  Maybe Saturday.  On Thursday morning, I've just entered the bike trail to work.  I'm rounding a corner as an oncoming cyclist passes me.  He's in a hoodie with hood on and drawstring tied.  No helmet.  He sticks out his left arm and puts out a couple of fingers as he says, "Peace, man."  Just around another bend, another cyclist.  This one in a yellow reflective vest.  He says, "Good morning," in more of a buttoned-up voice.  Not far from there and I'm passing the former guardrail homeless camp.  This morning, it appears that a crew is preparing to lay two big spools of cable, next to the guardrail.  I wonder if the camp was swept in advance of this work?  This week I was thinking about the long lines of cyclists I would see during this past summer out here on the bike trail, when I'm passed by a line of neon Lycra clad senior aged cyclists.   On the way home, I'm headed for the exit from the trail, past a golf course.  This month, the lights along the fence across the course, where every December Christmas trees are sold in a big lot, are dark now for another year.  I'm passed here this evening, not by a line if cyclists, but a line of runner with headlamps.  After I exit the trail, I see more coming down a sidewalk on a hill.  After I'm home, I go to bed.  I try to be in bed by 9 PM.  I wake up at 11:19, to use the bathroom.  I suddenly hear a noise.  Someone banging on my front door?  No.  It sounds almost like someone banging on metal, 20 times in a row.  My next-door neighbor's furnace malfunctioning?  It could be coming from the other half of my townhome complex.  It has to be gunshots.  I hear a couple of front doors creak open before I go back to sleep.  I didn't hear any vehicles before or after the gunshots.  No yelling.  No anything.  The next morning, I leave for work, and see a couple of bullet holes in a resident's window across the lot.  A couple of guys are standing outside, looking at them, and discussing security cameras.  No police tape anywhere.  When I come home from work, the window has been replaced.  There are wooden blinds on the inside, shot up.  One blind is broken.  A guy comes out of the unit and speaks to someone else outside about security cameras.

     Friday after work I took the transit system home again.  So I didn't get a look at conditions on the trail.  Saturday morning, I don't know what to expect either.  I consider taking transit again.  When I'm out of the door, I decide that it's a toss-up which will be faster this morning, trail or transit.  The streets are clear.  I'm headed for the trail.  There was perhaps not enough snow to plow, and the snow remains in patches, together with patches of ice melted into swaths of tiny beads.  There must be a technical term for this kind do f ice.  Along a line of trees, the trail always collects the melted and refrozen snow into patches of sloid ice.  I've mentioned riding in the winter as searching for the line between traction and insanity.  Over one patch of ice beads, I feel the line as I can sense the ice trying to throw me.  Like an invisible arm trying to push me over.  I slow down and then walk across a stretch of solid ice, my feet trying to slip.  Once I make my way down to a bridge, I encounter snow upon which I can not only ride, I can open up my gears.  I'm going almost as fast now as if the trail was clear.  I'm racing the transit system now, to see if I can beat the connecting bus which would otherwise be my final leg to work.  I know when it would have dropped me off.  I check a clock tower at the golf course after I break out of the trees.  Forty-five minutes to beat the bus.  It all depends on trail conditions between here and work.  They hold up the rest of the way.  I'm on a bike which runs so smooth I want to push it, and I hope to get to work with enough time to grab breakfast at the shopping center before work.  I cross the boulevard before I see any bus.  I get to work and check the clock.  I'm sure I've just beat the bus.  After work, I've stayed late on a Saturday again, and I don't have time to hit the gym.  I will instead go grocery shopping.  The first trail home has a phenomenon which I've noticed this autumn and winter: more people out on this trail walking their dogs than I ever saw during the summer.  Around one bend along one of the big string of connected parks, three people are walking with one dog off a leash.  They suddenly attempt to corral the dog off the trail.  A female tells me that the dog will otherwise chase me.  A guy who appears to be the patriarch says to me in a Slavic accent, "He will knock you off your bike."  Thanks for the honesty.  It's shortly after 4 PM as the sun is headed down.  The snow has mostly melted.  The solid ice patches have turned to water.  When I'm off the trail and coming down the street a block from my own, it's twilight.  I'm behind a car which has passed me.  The smattering of campers runs the long length of the street.  I hear the car honk as it passes one camper.  Then...it honks as it passes the nest.  (?)

     Yesterday evening, I get the grocery shopping done.  This leaves only the workout, lunch with the sister who is back home, and taking my newest bike in for a tune up.  I decide to ride all the way to the gym.  I'm coming down a long hill, toward the street with the campers and the trailhead around the corner.  I see an SUV parked in the middle of the street, facing me.  The driver's side is next to the driver's side of another SUV, parked along the curb.  The driver gets out and tries the front passenger side door.  The car alarm immediately goes off.  He casually gets back into the driver's seat of his vehicle and pulls away.  An aborted car theft?  Hmm.  I'm down the trail and grab breakfast before the gym.  I decide to take the train all the way to a stop downtown, a short ride to a connecting train, which takes me to the sister's side of town.  After lunch, I ride all the way to the sporting goods supercenter.  A young tech takes a gander at the bike.  The front derailer needs adjusting.  It's having trouble, she observes, shifting into high gear.  I pointed out the loose brake cable.  The broken kick stand is coming off.  She finds me a brand new one.  She claims that the tune up itself is covered under warranty.  If it needs a new chain and cassette, the parts would be, at most, just about as much as the tune up.  Should be ready tomorrow.  Sweet.  I walk back to the train.  At the sister's, I changed out of the gear which I left the house in, when it was chilly.  Now, the temperature is dropping again.  I take a mall shuttle to a train, which should take me closer to a crosstown bus.  The connections are prompt.

     Tuesday.  I wake up with enough time that I decide to pick up my bike at the bike shop.  Last evening, I got the email that the tune up is complete.  I Jump on the bus to the train, to the transit hub at one end of downtown.  I go into the terminal to pick up more transit system ride coupons.  A security guard is banging on metal benches, waking up the homeless, telling them to stay awake so they don't miss their busses.  I'm sure he knows, just as they do, they ain't there to catch no bus.  The office at this transit hub doesn't have the new year's issue of ride coupons.  This is odd because one grocery chain does have them.  But the transit system station does not.  (?)  I stop into the health food grocery next door for a quick breakfast.  i watch a homeless guy carry a quart of milk and a box of Lucky Charms into the grocery.  (?)  I grab some eggs and a sausage from the buffet and get into line.  The guy at the end is looking back and forth between his phone and at the line, but does not appear to be in line.  A U Scan checker offers to check me out when she then asks the guy with his phone what he needs.  The other checker, behind the stand where the line is, then looks at me as the first one is attempting to get an answer from the guy.  I tell the other checker that this one offered to check me out when the other takes me to a U Scan.  I outta there and I hike to the sporting goods supercenter, where I eat outside as I wait for the place to open.  When it does, I get in line behind people with skis waiting to be repaired.  A short grey-haired guy comes along and asks each customer if they are waiting to pick something up.  When he gets to me, he asks me the same.  When I tell him I am picking something up, he asks me if I have a "pink slip."  (Am I getting fired?)  I tell him I'm picking up a bike.  He then acknowledges that I wouldn't have a pink slip.  He asks me what kind of bike, and he mentions two separate sets of letters and numbers which I assume are two different kinds of bicycles.  This is the first time I've ever heard anyone mention these sets of letters and numbers.  I reply that I'm picking up a mountain bike.  "What brand?"  I mention that it's the brand that this store manufactures.  I mention the color.  He asks me to wait before he returns to tell me he can't find it.  He disappears.  I get up to the front, where a tech brings out my bike.  I had them take off a used kickstand which I tried using on this bike.  It never balanced correctly and in the stored position was hitting the spokes on the back rim.  The one they put on appears to be a monster kickstand attached to the rear of the bike frame.  I'm off to work as I make a train connection just in time.  After work, I'm headed to one supermarket which is not on strike, as another is.  I called them to make sure they do have the new year's ride coupons in stock for sale.  When I get there, they inform me that their customer service is closed.  They need all their employees at the check stands.  Their sales have doubled because they have picked up the business from the supermarket chain which is on strike.  They are also out of the one product which only this chain carries.  I withdraw cash from an ATM and get changed into singles.  It's back to dollars until the strike is over, and I can purchase more ride coupons.

     Wednesday.  I get home after work and see another unit in my townhome complex with a bullet hole in a window.  It suggests that the shooting was impersonal.  And perhaps there was more than one shooter.  This is the age of the firearm as a toy.  At some point this week, I ride home in freezing fog.  The following day saw a dusting of snow.  I ride to work past a guy putting yard signs along the trail, for another marathon run the following day.  The ground is so frozen, he must use a drill.  On Saturday I'm navigating the frozen streets, using my headlamp in an attempt to spot any patches of ice.  I'm coming down the street with the SUV which I watched someone try to steal.  I don't see any change on the road at all when I hit a patch of something.  I cross the line from traction into insanity and I land on the ground.  The strike does not last long, the employees got a quick concession.  The following day, I will be able to purchase transit system ride coupons at my regular supermarket.  But this afternoon, after a trip to the gym on the way home after work (which is nice to not have to do on my only day off), I'm now in the habit of taking the train from there.  I get out at the station closest to home.  I decide that I will be home just as the next couple of buses show up here, and I head out o the station.  This takes me past an old, if not frequent, haunt of mine.  It's a restaurant called The Breakfast King.  I don't remember the first time I went there, but it was originally built decades ago, to serve a rubber factory spread out in various buildings around it.  The factory is long gone.  The place used to be open 24 hours a day, still had the decor from fifty years ago, and waitresses who wore the traditional white waitress uniform.  Right down to white shoes.  And orange aprons to match the orange booths.  Next to the credit card machine was an old-fashioned cash register. T-shirts with the restaurant name on the front hung on a far wall, for sale only with cash.  And it was old fashioned grill food.  Outrageous omelettes for breakfast.  Fried food or sandwiches or soup for lunch.  Meat entrees for dinner.  Not the kind of specialty food in popular demand for packaged delivery, or even pick up, during Covid.  I don't remember recently seeing anyone picking up a delivery there, though what I found on what's left of a website mentions something about delivery.  In fact, their response to everyone else's pivot to take out/delivery appears to have been basically "Fuck you."  Fuck you to the present and future.  They went out without even pretending to change the business plan, never reopening after Christmas.

     So, Sunday morning, I'm headed back to the supermarket, on my bike for the first time in several shopping trips.  Just past the long street a block from my own, with the handful of campers, is "Victory Outreach" church.  Somewhere between 9:30 and 10 AM, a couple of guys who otherwise look like mafia types are standing at each side of the entrance to the parking lot.  They both have black wool coats and black hair, slicked back by a copious amount of oil.  Instead of firearms, each one holds a welcome sign.  The second one I pass tells me, "Jesus loves you, bro."  I reply, "That's what I hear...all the time."  Foggetaboutit.  Up the street, I pass a Caucasian guy on his own bike, coming from the direction of the supermarket.  A milk crate is over his rear wheel, full of groceries.  First person besides myself who I've seen doing what I'm doing.  After another long day out, I decide to take the bus home from the train station.  We pass a couple of Caucasian guys on bikes, neon windbreakers ad all, coming down one of just two nearby streets across two highways and a river.  The first I've seen on bikes coming down this street on my side of town.  Later on in the afternoon, I get home to see one of the townhome residents is having an open house, for prospective buyers.  It comes quite fast after the gunshots.  I wonder why someone would sell their place while bullet holes still sit in the center of cracks in a window, at one end of the complex.  Unless they want to get out now.  I take a look at the info on a laminated sheet hanging of the for-sale sign.  It lists the HOA fees as less than half of what I assume we all pay.  Or else the HOA ain't telling me something.  And, there are photos of the interior.  The walls are a deep cerulean blue.  The stainless-steel fridge may have an ice maker.  The bathroom has a huge round vanity mirror.  This joint looks done up.  This unit is right next to the one with a hole through the wooden steps to the front porch, where a guy who threatened other residents used to live.  With his baby momma and baby.

     "We will show you more than you can bear...  But don't ask us what we mean."  ...traditionally the province of the story...myth, history, fiction, and yes, war journalism.  ...technologically advanced war...its depths had to be sounded with an ancient medium.  ...storytelling...familiar to Homer and Herodotus.  The more deeply events are embedded in story, however, the more they can tell...past mistakes and future challenges.  - Reporting Vietnam, Forward by M. J. Bates, 2000.

     I went back inside to pack for my thirteenth embed.  Body armor...blood type written on...tape.  Can stop a 7.62 round...  Helmet...scratched...been to Najaf, Fallujah, and Mosul.  Wiley X Ballistic eye protection.  A Thuraya satellite phone...  A cheap power bar imported from China.  ...the antibiotic Cipro given to me by Andi, and a rubber tourniquet...  Together, the bags weighed about thirty-five pounds.  - I Lost My Love in Baghdad, M. Hastings, 2008

     ...if you're not doing a live shot, you need to be behind a curtain in another room with folding tables.  ...a pair of emergency Spanx.  [Spanx,] the unofficial sponsor of the female press corps...  I have 21,376 unread emails.  Three hundred unopened text messages.  My suitcase is the size of a refrigerator.  ...because I don't have the time to watch a banged-up black belt spin in a cycle from now until eternity.  I'm not Sisyphus...  Room service, maid service, the balm of a perpetually stoked minibar.  However...there's [only] so many bags of Smart Puffs you can down with a shot of Hendricks...  The room was 250 square feet...  I convinced a friend to let me stay at his place.  ...four hundred square feet - half of which are now covered with my clothes.

     (Did I just drop something?  Please don't let it be my portable Wi-Fi.)  I've already lost one of those. It's dark and there's snow everywhere.  (Is that a shoe?  The toe is facing up.  Jesus, did someone get buried?)  "Ahhh!"  I catch myself before my face lands in it.  My pants are ripped and I'm bleeding.  Charging cables are hanging out of my backpack.

     It's midafternoon in...Florida.  I'm in the backseat of a rental car...ditching my jeans and T-shirt for the skirt and blouse I didn't have time to fuss over...at five in the morning.  ...I sacrificed a boyfriend, a dreamjob...and...stability.  But these are the normal fatalities of ambition.  But...  I am losing...a life itself, a way of being in the world.  - Unbelievable, K. Tur, 2017

     There were times when only a handful of journalists would show up, outnumbered...by public affairs officers and the civilian media advisors.  At one press conference...as the country descended into civil war, only two journalists attended.  The press releases were written with a stilted, half-literate mix of military lingo and public relations spin.  Hundreds of releases focused on weapons caches...a way for the military to keep score, along with the body count...but in a country teeming with firearms and explosives, the notion that the finds possibly make a dent in the...violence seemed absurd.  The public affairs officers would spend hours writing the press releases, hours reviewing them, hours finding pictures to go along with them.  As the months went on and the situation did not improve, the press releases seemed to become more cheerful, more detached from reality, dispatches from a la-la land of their own.  ...a unit nicknamed the Polar bears..."chose to launch Operation Polar Valor on Dec. 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  'We try to pick days that the enemy knows are holidays to the Americans.  It is during those times that the enemy is less likely to think we are going to do anything.'"  ...Pearl Harbor is not a holiday, and I seriously doubt that any insurgent...would have it marked on their calendar.  "Paratroopers create gated community...  According to an old proverb, good fences make good neighbors.  Paratroopers...are...building a three-mile protective wall...between a Sunni enclave and the surrounding Shite neighborhood."  "Gated community" - a term...to describe wealthy suburban residential complexes in the United States.  "Why can't we get our message out there?"  "Why won't you report the good news?"  ...we don't even come close to reporting all the bad news.  There's too much of it.

     I know the cancelled mission does not matter at all.  So how many missions and patrols would it take to make a difference?  Is there a number?  Does anyone know it?  How many missions have been done already?  Tens of thousands [by the beginning of 2007]?  And what a difference they have fucking made!  Why go out at all?  You can make as much of a difference by doing nothing, right?

     Andi pops out from behind a blast wall...  I...take my body armor off, and go over to see Andi.  We stand there being watched by my security contingent and hers, and we can't shake the somewhat self-conscious feeling that this is something of an event, me coming to see her.  - Hastings

     ...I can see the vitriol rising, the death threats blowing around like loose trash.  The most aggressive members of the crowd are now as close as they can get, taunting me...  A reporter...sends...a picture of a bald man who won't stop saying my name.  ...the hashtag "#I'mwithTur"...trends...long after...a few lingering creeps slink home.  [Later on,] The crowd in New Hampshire is frothing...  "Assassinate that bitch," the man said.  And the crowd cheered on.  - Tur

     There is this moment before I know...when life was good, when I was in Baghdad with Andi and my career was skyrocketing...we were planning trips...I looked at a diamond ring in Dubai...  ...the moment before the future no longer matters...nothing more than a wish for the past.  "Michael...  We lost Andi today.  ...we think her car was hit with rocket propelled grenades."  - Hastings

     Finally, to Tony, do we have time to get married now?  - Tur

     Sunday evening.  I'm in a Chinese restaurant which I discovered, right behind the Vietnamese one, right behind my home.  It's a broader menu than my old Chinese place across the street.  They have three TVS.  Two are tuned to Chinese channels.  One is CCTV, I think.  (Communist China TV?)  On the screen are images of US fighter jets.  It appears to be Ukraine pilots being advised my Americans. There are scenes of warships.  Then the camera cuts to the anchor, who appears almost as nothing short of a game show host.  Then there is a story about a big wall with a lot of displayed plates.  On Monday, I wake up to blowing snowflakes.  Fuck this.  I'm taking the transit system.  Maybe I can ride home.  I take my bike and shuffle down my street to the bus stop.  It's right in front of a middle school.  I hear someone blow a whistle.  A woman runs out into the middle of the intersection.  It's an old-fashioned crossing guard with a hand-held stop sign.  This is the first time in the 15 years in this neighborhood that I've seen a crossing guard at this school.  And she's blowing a freaking whistle, and she's saying "Hi," to a father who walked his kid to school.  Next, along comes a guy in a thin jacket with a hood.  It's in the 20s F. out here.  He's complaining about how cold he is.  After we get onto the bus, he's listening to music through earbuds and attempting to sing along.  It sounds like he's moaning.  It snows until late afternoon.  The ride home is actually not bad at all.  I'm swinging around the long park below the waterpark.  A creek runs between it and the trail.  I come out of an underpass and suddenly I'm in a fog bank.  I get to the connecting trail and there's fog along spots of the river.  The following morning, there's frost on bushes and chain link fences along the trail.  Thursday.  It just began snowing as I'm leaving for work.  A layer of fresh snow covers everything, perhaps an inch.  I have traction even over former slippery spots.  It's wet, not powder.  I enter the trail before the plow has made it this far.  Soon, I reach the plowed trail.  Just ahead, on an exit ramp, is the pickup truck with a plow.  I turn toward an underpass and I stop.  I spot a flat screen TV sitting sideways in a bicycle trailer., just off to the side of the trail.  I want to get a shot of it before I hear a voice.  "What's goin' on, man?"  It comes from the homeless guy trying to sleep on top of the rising grade of boulders next to the top of the bridge.  He's behind cardboard from a box which originally held oranges.  There are illustrations of oranges on the outside.  The pickup goes past, and a passenger waves at me.  It stops snowing around midafternoon.  I don't like the road conditions.  I elect to take the bus home.  Bus to the train, and off at the station where my bus home stops.  It's dark now, and I'm sitting at the gate for just a short time.  It takes a minute or two before I notice the police cruiser parked at the train platform.  Then I notice the ambulance.  Then I see a paramedic wheeling a guy on a stretcher.  A police officer carries his backpack.

     I have Friday off.  Dentist appointment.  I didn't want to try to make some kind of neck-breaking dash to work from there.  I also take the opportunity of the rest of the day to head out to another library used book sale.  My current dentist in within walking distance.  I recall my sweet twentysomething Vietnamese female dentist, holding her tiny fists in front of me to describe what's happening with my teeth.  After my appointment, I head home and get my bike.  I check the bus schedule and dash off on the bike a couple blocks down my street to the bus stop.  Before I leave my parking lot, I can feel that my back rim is running sluggish.  Not that the tire is flat.  The rear wheel has a tendency to slip out of true over time.  The quick release doesn't hold it in position, and I have to adjust it from time to time.  Which I do.  I know the bus is close to showing up.  When I'm a half a block along, I see it coming, and I make the stop just in time.  As soon as my bike is loaded on the front rack, and I step inside, the bus begins to pull out.  A car comes around us, honking.  The driver sticks an arm straight up through the open window (in winter), middle finger extended.  The driver tells me they are crazy around here.  I tell him this neighborhood is always this way.  He replies, "It is?"  This particular corner a few short years ago saw another driver flip off the driver behind him, who was honking at him.  The driver behind him shot and killed him.  The driver had just been released from jail or prison.  He claimed he was "firing a warning shot."  (?)  I wonder if the driver who flipped off this transit system driver knows about that shooting.  Or perhaps it's in the neighborhood's genes.  The bus drops me at the station, and a train takes me to a station where I grab lunch across the street.  The bike helps move me there and back, just in time to catch a bus down the long road to the library here, across town from my own side.  More than fifteen years ago, I was coming out here as a part of my job then, as a floater to many different company store locations.  I remember walking, riding a bike, and taking a bus this same route to a store.  Many memories working for a company which no longer exists.  I'm off the bus and take a short ride to the library.  It ain't a huge sale, not like the downtown branch has, but it isn't stinky either.  I find a couple of interesting books.  Then it's back on the bus, a bit of a hike to the train, and a bit of a long train ride to a station from where I catch a bus back home.  I decide to use the rest of the afternoon to get grocery shopping out of the way.  I grab dinner at a deathburger first, and then collect the groceries.  On the short bus trip home, I listen to a passenger converse with the driver, the two obviously friends.  The driver expounds on the travails of being a driver who must deal with a disingenuous public.  The driver tells the guy, "I've been in this seat since 12:45 PM, and haven't gotten out."  He says that the transit system runs "a hell of a lot of buses up and down" my boulevard.  This squares with my recollection.  One route runs more locally on the south end.  Another runs from the end of the line a good 120 blocks north.  Two more are express buses which run from the end of the line south to another train station.  Or at least they used to.  "(The transit system) is gonna have to decide how much it wants to put up with (from passengers who know they can come on board with a goddamned hustle instead of a fare) before they raise the fare again.  And it's hurting the passengers who are honest, who pay $114 for a monthly pass."  I assume he's implying this boulevard's hustlers will determine its transit future.  The passenger tells him, "Three dollars is a lot for a fare.  I mean, if you don't have a job, you know."  (If you don't have a job, why are you riding the bus?)  The driver tells him that he knows, he was there, he used to ride the transit system.  In the process, the passenger admits he got on this bus drunk at one point, and passed out.  He was headed north and woke up back at the end of the line.

     Saturday.  I stay more than an hour late at work, and I'm coming home down the long street a block from my own.  A pickup truck is parked next to a flatbed behind a camper.  Someone is loading the scrap metal off the trailer into the bed of the pickup.  On the way to work this morning before sunrise.  I was coming down the block with campers along an open field.  I paused to snap a photo of one camper I first saw here just a week or two ago.  It has spraypainted on one corner something like "turkey time" in big letters.  As I'm digging out my camera from my bag, I noticed a car come to a stop at the intersection and just sit there.  When I took a look, I saw a police cruiser, perhaps wondering what I was doing.  The following day, I'm headed cross town again, from an early birthday lunch with the sister to meet my desperate demand for yogurt.  I decide I don't want to slog over the north bridge.  I've seen it when it has snow.  I make my way south, across my boulevard, and toward a couple of bridges.  Headed east, first one over the river and then the other over the interstate.  Crossing over the highway, in front of me is a young guy walking two tiny dogs.  Their leashes stretch across the entire length of the wide walkway across the bridge.  I can't imagine who wants to walk their dogs along a busy avenue and across an interstate highway.  Maybe he hates his dogs.  I make my way past them and turn north, to cross the thoroughfare just past.  Just before I cross the tracks, a train arrives.  This is probably the best place to get stopped by a train, because directly behind me is an underpass past the train.  I turn around and make a left to go under the train bridge.  On the last stretch of sidewalk, now I'm behind another young guy.  He steps along with attitude.  When I climb up into an old parking lot, he becomes yet another pedestrian who suggests I tell him, "Passing on your left."  I bet he says that to all the cyclists.  Climbing the hill through the underpass, again I'm behind the guy with the little dogs.