How far away is “Away From It All”?

So the other day I really had the urge to get out of town, But I still had to be back home in time for all the trappings of responsible adulthood. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. There is something that seems more pure about daydreams when they occur at a scenic overlook that is not marked with a “Vista Point” sign on the side of the road. There is a clarity that comes with the focus required to pilot a motorcycle down some technical ribbon of forgotten asphault that has not known the embrace of a street sweeper since it was pressed into place.

 

I guess, since here in the Bay Area, “it” is “all” cell phones and traffic. So then away from “it all” is about 30 miles from the Castle. Head up Sir Francis Drake Blvd to Fairfax and hang a left on Bolinas Rd. The Fairfax Coffee Roastery is the landmark your looking for.

I’ve ridden this road before but never on a bike like Matilda. This is kinda the thing that falls right into her mission statement. This road, this tasty bit of convenient isolation is Bolinas-Fairfax Rd. The BoFax, to those that know.

 

It quickly gets desolate, especially if you go around brunch time on a weekday.

 

What begins like any other foothill road soon descends and undulates into some coastal conifers and writhes back and forth onto itself like some mythical giant python trying to strangle an equally mythical and giant rodent.

 

 

 

The Mighty Bofax spit me out on the PCH, just south of Point Reyes Station. I turned around and did it again to get these pics.

When I was done I headed up the coast to take a less technical route  back over the hills to meet a friend for lunch. That’s when I found out how close “away from it” all really was. No Cell reception, no other people, a great view and the slight rustle of a constant gentle breeze.

The crest on Marshall-Petaluma Rd. I just switched off the bike and sat by the side of the road with a bottle of water.

 

It was perfect. Until that sweaty, mouth breathing bicyclist rode up and wanted to chat.

 

Go Play In Traffic!

By show of hands, who else loves horrible traffic?

I’ve written before about the merits of motocommuting and about how my close proximity to work made me a worse employee because of the convenience.

Now though I have evolved as both an employee (now a supervisor) and as a bay area motorcyclist. The professional evolution now has me commuting to SFO, and my evolution as a motorcyclist has me really enjoying it. ( Plus having an excuse to buy a new bike helps) I’ve often talked about the zen of focus that comes with battling traffic. Now though, the battle has become a game. Not like high stakes tag, where being “it” means getting creamed. My mindset is less “I’ll show them!!!…Pay attention or I will exact retribution upon your side view mirrors!!” and more “WEEEE! look how much fun you could be having if you, too, were riding!” If I’m going to take the self-appointment of Moto-Ambassador seriously, I would rather evoke a touch of jealousy than create fist-shaking ire.

Because the commute is longer, I have to leave much earlier. That means no punctuality pressure, and by not being rushed I actually get to work earlier and much more refreshed than my caged subordinates and contemporaries.

Lead by example, right?

 

S’been a while

Wow, has it really been more than two years since my last post?

 

Well if you didn’t know I’m now a Husband and (step)Dad! I will often have thoughts that I think are witty and perhaps worthy of sharing with a bunch of strangers, but I have been afraid of compromising the privacy of the rest of my little family. Plus, life has gotten pretty full. The time that I have to sit and bang out a post is better spent sitting on the couch, doing nothing but being still and quiet.

Maybe this is being a grown up.

 

Maybe I just need another exciting road trip to make me want to gush text.

The Hawthorne BARF Rally  is only a few weeks away.

 

We’ll see.

Got game?

So I’m rocking some public transit action to the city. I got a dinner invite and I’ll be providing some cheap Mexican beer.

That’s right Tecate in a can.

So here I am sitting in the back of the bus (where all the bad kids sit) listening to some Cat Empire on the old iPhone, when all of a sudden this kid jumps out of the seat in the middle of the bus and starts throwing these cryptic gang signs out the big back window.

I pull one of the earphones out to hear what he’s saying as he’s signing.

“five one oh four nine nine ……etc etc” and in between signs he’s rapping his cell phone on the window

I was completely flabbergasted.

I looked at him and said “dude, did you just try to pick up on some chicks,..from the fucking bus?”

He goes “naw man..” as he shows me the screen of his phone with a text from one of the girls with her name “..I didn’t try, I got them fucking digits son”

With that he clanked his brass balls together and sat back down.

That’s game!

$12.85 an hour

So today I was walking across the parking lot at work, where I saw a penny on the ground. As I knelt down to pick it up, a coworker asked me if I dropped something. I just replied, “Nah, it was a penny”

To which he replied that it wasn’t worth it. Like his time is too valuable to bend at the waist for so little compensation.

So I did a little experiment and found that it takes me about 2.8 seconds to recognize a penny and pick it up. And of you extrapolate a penny for 2.8 seconds of effort, it works out to about $12.85 an hour.

That seems worth it to me.

I saw that coming

So it’s such a pretty day that I decided to take a stroll around the hood. I usually just walk to the bus stop or down to some store on the main drag here in The Laurel. But this time I decided to check out the actual neighborhood. I mean I see people walking around when I’m watching Hood Tv , so it would stand to reason that I might see other people from the neighborhood to chat with. Although I really didn’t get more than a smile and a “How’s it going” or a wave here and there. But I discovered that it is a very hilly and steep neighborhood.

Well it was trash day today so the scavengers were out. These are the folks that root through the trash and recycle bins set on the street, and retrieve the recyclables to take them to the recyclers for cash. Most of them just stick to aluminum cans and plastic bottles but the really hard core ones get the glass bottles too. That’s when I saw her. A little Asian woman pushing a heavily laden shopping cart. Judging by the clinking noises it was mostly full of glass. With bags filled with cans and plastic jugs tied to the outside of it. It was the size of a VW Beetle. She, however, was about the size of a ten-year-old. She couldn’t see over the top of it. She was pretty stocky but at maybe 5′ even, that puts her at about 140 pounds tops. I turned the corner ahead of her and started clopping down a very steep hill. In the back of my mind I was going to say something or offer help but I don’t think she should be doing it in the first place. I think the scavengers are a problem, and a liability. I mean I’ve seen the damage an empty cart does when it gets a little speed in a parking lot. I can only imagine what a 250 pound cart full of glass and garbage would do if it started sailing uncontrollably down a steep hill and slammed into a car. Or worse yet into an intersection. As this thought was milling about the ole noggin I heard the frantic slapping of little Asian feet in flip flops from behind me.

Guess what I saw?

C’mon, guess.

That’s right, it was a 250 pound shopping cart full of glass and garbage sailing uncontrollably down a steep hill right towards a Pearl White Toyota SUV. It was quite uncontrolled despite the best efforts of the little Asian woman. She was in front of it trying to slow it down with out turning it as it would have toppled over and spilled the product of hours of trash rooting. Facing the cart and frantically back pedaling down the hill, the carts momentum conspired with both of her cheap flip flops and soon she was just a lump of meat being shoveled down the hill by the runaway cart. I was already running up the hill to help her out as the front wheels had swallowed her legs and she was sliding on her hips and the palm of her hands. This whole grizzly flesh and glass contraption had drifted to the left and she was pinned against the curb by the time I got up the hill to her. I had to put my back up against the front of the cart and give it everything I had to lift the front a few inches so she could get her legs free. Then I wedged the casters against the curb so it wouldn’t go anywhere. She winced and inspected her road rash. I was really surprised nothing was broken. She looked like a Picasso when I got to her. But I guess she was really flexible.

Then she asked me to call her phone because she couldn’t find it. I did. She found it. I helped her get the cart to the bottom of the hill and then during her recap of the events my sorry for her feelings kinda went away.

She was holding the phucking phone in the crook of her neck when she lost the cart. She just wasn’t paying attention.Yakking away and didn’t notice how steep the hill was because her cart was too high to see over and she couldn’t look around it because she was holding the phone with her ear against her shoulder. “I need both hands to push the cart” she said.

ARE you FUCKING KIDDING Me!!!!???!?!

Thanks for clearing that up

So,this morning I was watching the news. I always do when I’m having my ritualistic morning cup-o-joe.

This morning though I was insulted even more than usual. They were continuing their coverage of the Sandra Cantu case with the courtroom appearance of her accused killer. The insulting part was when the news anchor described the scene when they brought Melissa Huckaby into the courtroom to face the charges.

“Here you see Melissa Huckaby, in the red prison jumpsuit with shackles, as she breaks into tears when the judge reads the charges against her. She faces charges of Rape with”…..lewd…with a minor..kidnapping…blah blah oh yeah and murder.

They then went on about the death penalty and what not, but the part that insulted me was the description of Huckaby.

I’m sure I’m nit picking, but does he really have to point out that she’s the one in the prison clothes with the shackles? I mean does he think that I’ll confuse one of the bailiffs with the woman who’s been in the news more than the president? It kinda plays into how stupid the news assumes we are. Whenever they mention OJ Simpson they always throw in the bit about him beating the rap for killing his wife. Do they think I’ve forgotten? They even remind me about the Sharon Tate murder whenever Charlie Manson is in the news. What? Charles Manson is in Jail??!?! When did this happen?

Majic Johnson has AIDS? Bobby Brown is Whitney Houston’s estranged husband? Lovell Mixon did what?

I mean at some point a person’s celebrity becomes durable. Lets assume that there is a certain amount of collective memory and deductive reasoning. If you don’t get it, you probably shouldn’t care.

Side note: I hear the radio personalities saying the horrible things that should happen to Huckaby, whipping their listeners into a reddened, blood thirsty froth. I hear that the Tracy police have all but called of the search for any leads for another killer. There are no other suspects. With the pubic outcry and pouring of sympathy, I hope the law enforcers weren’t too hasty in giving us all a head on a stick. I hope for Huckaby’s sake that she is the killer, and she’s getting what she deserves. Because nothing could be more hellish than being railroaded for a crime like this. I hope for the sake of all the nice little girls, that the focus is being aimed in the right place.

Safe Sex

So I have a few friends coming over this afternoon. They’re both girls so I make sure that the Castle’s bathroom is clean and serviceable. Nobody likes to hover.

I have been crazy busy with work lately and really wasn’t putting much priority in the pisser. But today I realized it looked more like a crime scene, than a bathroom.

I’m a gross slob, what can I say?

So I go to empty the bathroom waste bin, and find the used evidence of a safe sexual encounter of some one that wasn’t me. I mean I’m thankful the thoughtful gentleman( or lady) didn’t flush the latex baby barrier as the plumbing is old and who knows what that would have caused.

But I must say I was surprised to find a condom and a pair of rubber gloves!? Again. I appreciate your proactive measures but if safe sex with you requires MOPP Level Three personal protective gear, maybe you shouldn’t be having random hookup sex at parties.

I guess there is a possibility that it’s the evidence of multiple safe sexual events. Or maybe there was sex and a pelvic exam. The gloves are really throwing me. If you recognize yourself in this post, please clue me in on what you did with them. The speculation is killing me.

Thanks Jack

OK so it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I was hoping to finish up the grand Oman Adventure before I moved on to other things but some things have transpired lately and I feel the need to write. Even though it’s out of sequence.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the Four Oakland Police Officers that lost their lives in the line of duty a few Saturdays ago. I was getting infuriated with the media giving so much airtime to the few people that were willing to say on camera that the killer was a nice guy and a victim of circumstance. That he was everything he wasn’t and even comparing him to Oscar Grant. I knew better. I knew that not all of Oakland was behind a ruthless murderer instead of the men and women of OPD. 

A quick thought on OPD. The people that join the Oakland Police Department aren’t ignorant of OPD’s reputation among the citizens of this great city. It takes a special person to lay your life on the line to protect the lives and property of a population that will spit in your face as willingly as pat you on the back. It’s simple and random acts of kindness that mean so much and reinforce the sense that you make a difference. When I walk around my neighborhood, everyone smiles at each other. People say hello, and sometimes even thank you. So I would like to recognize some one that I could never recognize in person if I saw him. Some random dude named Jack.

 

A few days ago some of my coworkers needed to get some supplies from Home Depot. When they were done they cruised over to the Starbucks next door and ordered a few drinks and snacks. When they got to the register they were arguing about who would pick up the tab. One would pull out his wallet and say “I got this”. While another officer would use some expert Cop-Fu to block the monetary retrieval with “Oh No no no, I got this one, you got it last time”

Before the third officer could try to claim financial responsibility for the cups-o-joe, the cashier waves them all off and says “Actually guys, we got this” and she grabs a Coffee Card from the register and swipes it in for the payment. Reading the puzzled looks on everyone’s faces, she explains “On Friday before the funeral for those OPD Guys that got killed, this guy named Jack came in and put a few hundred dollars on a coffee card and told us to use it for any Cop that comes in for a coffee.   “

Just like that, their day was made. Then they came back to the Seaport and made all our days with that story. I’m sure the money on the card has been exhausted by now.( i mean c’mon it is a Starbucks, after all) And even though I did not get to get some free coffee from Jack, I just wanted to say thanks. 

You really made a difference, for all of us.

Pardon the interruption

So I got caught up in the planning and what not of the big birthday ride instead of writing the rest of the Grand Oman Adventure.

In fact I’m on the big birthday ride right now so nothing of interest will be posted for at least a few weeks.

Sorry. But your patience will be rewarded. It’s been a cool couple of months