Friday was nice. I went over to Berkeley to check out the campus since I’ve never been before. It was a nice spot. I read my book for an hour or so near the school of optometry, which is fitting because I usually use my eyes to read.
I had mixed feelings seeing all the students walking around campus. They looked young. I hadn’t really chilled on a college campus in a while, and it was now clearer to me than ever that my friends and I were markedly older than these people. It’s slight, but we are certainly older looking now.
And it felt a bit different than when you’d see a younger kid in middle school or something. Back then, you knew you were growing too. Everyone was growing. We were all excited to see the adults we’d eventually become. Now it just felt like I was an adult looking at other adults who were simply younger than I was.
I hopped back on the bike and up over the hills into Orinda, where I got lunch.
From Moraga, taking Pinehurst and Redwood roads was a fun set of twistes that dropped me out into Castro Valley. I was behind a Honda odyssey, which usually mandates a slow cruising pace, but this one was ripping through the downhill winding roads. It was a joy to keep pace with it.
I then took the freeways all around through San Jose and back up to downtown SF to avoid paying any tolls. Penny pinching was the theme of the day - a local spot had $1 beers on the menu tonight.
I returned to Rishi and Jordan’s place to see the duo huddled around two candles in the living room. It was very romantic. Apparently they hadn’t been paying the power bill for a year, and the electric company finally put an end to their gravy train.
Jordan phoned PG&E. I told him he should say he and Rishi each thought the other person was footing the bill. How could they argue with that? I was crying with laughter. Eventually the lights came back on and it was time to hit the town.
On Saturday morning I awoke on Marko’s couch with Jordan taking the nice comfy floor. The $1 beers had done us in. After a brief chat with Jord, I headed out into the world. My socks were wet from walking on the roof last night and I needed to dry them. The unit had a coin-based dryer downstairs, but I only had cash. I searched around on the ground for some quarters, but no luck. I’d have to just carry the socks with me this morning.
I was on the hunt for a good breakfast place, but then I remembered that grocery stores are actually a great place to get food as well. So when I saw the Korean market on Fillmore street I decided I’d construct myself a little breakfast there. I got a mandarin, a carrot, and a $6 thing of gimbap, just like Jen would make.
I spent the next while wandering around for a good spot to sit and eat. It took a minute but eventually I found myself in the Beideman & O’Farrell Mini Park. The food was delicious and I felt really at peace here.
So peaceful that when I eventually got up and kept wandering around, I found myself browsing juice and soda options for at least ten minutes in a nearby corner store. I was hoping to find the perfect drink. There was something I wanted, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it to a particular product. And every time I thought I had it, I’d look at the bottle to see it was months expired.
After several cycles of opening and closing the fridge, the store clerk came over to me and asked what I was doing. I told him I was trying to pick out a juice. He told me he was very busy and needed me to make a decision.
Feeling rushed, I snagged a simply orange and moved on. Not ideal since I had already had a mandarin for breakfast, but clearly there was no time for prudent decision making on this side of town.
I took it to the register and smiled through my mustache and patchy goatee. I had my motorcycle pants on, my wet socks on one hip, a knife and two flowers I had picked on the other, and my jacket was tied around my waist with my wallet and phone in each of its pockets, causing it to swing heavily with each step.
I fumbled around for my wallet, looking in the wrong pocket first, and eventually paid for my juice, probably to the surprise of the clerk.
This got me thinking about the people that I often profile on the street as not having it all together. Had I seen myself in this state as a third party, I’m not sure what I’d think. Maybe that I was high on something at the very least.
But I had a clear explanation for every one of these unusual items and behaviors. I still needed to dry my socks, I wanted to bring the flowers to Rishi and Jordan’s place, my riding pants were my only pair of pants, and it was too hot to wear the jacket normally. That and half of the drinks in that fridge were expired.
Yet I’m sure whoever left their pile of clothes in the park I dined in, or the naked guy riding his bike also had their reasons. Why were theirs any less valid than mine?
The flowers began to wilt and I realized they needed hydration fast. I was only a third of the way through my orange juice at this point, so I leveraged it to save the flowers. They were orange flowers after all, so I’d at least gotten the color matching right. I also remembered Tobias eating some clovers in his garden as proof you can eat pretty much any plant you want. So any contamination of the juice from the flowers was of no concern.
That evening we went to the GT vs Stanford game. I coincidentally saw Sam Erben and several other old friends from YJSP that I hadn’t seen in years. Nikhil bought me a beer and it was cool to hear about his ideas. It was nice to see they are doing well.
Right at the end of the third quarter, Marko Lindsey and I sat down to see Stanford immediately score a touchdown. To lessen the heartache, I told Marko it wasn’t really that important to me if GT won or lost.
This felt less and less true though as the volume and frequency of the crying behind me worsened through the quarter. We were seated behind some die-hard Cardinals.
At one point Stanford got an interception but the player who got it landed on his ankle wrong and collapsed to the ground, and I heard commentary from the shrieker that “it doesn’t fucking matter, he caught it. We’re good.”
And now I was invested. I suddenly felt a strong disgust towards this Palo Alto housewife behind me who didn’t even care about the health of her own players. I wanted our guys to win and make her upset. That’d show her. We eventually lost.
I took a step back to wonder what it is we’re even doing here. It’s as if there’s such a strong desire to see fighting or some sort of spectacle of strength that we have to dress people up and pit them against each other to see who’s better. And I wanted the opposite team to be disappointed because I didn’t like them now.
As we left the stadium I mused that we’d all be on the same side if another nation invaded the stadium. And then, if aliens showed up to do the same, we and the invading nation would team up. Someone posed the question as to what Israelis and Palestinians would do if aliens landed to take over Gaza. We weren’t sure, but decided it probably depended on how vicious the aliens were behaving towards humans.
I’ve now made my way over to Davis and am here with Jason who is finishing up an essay for law school which is due at midnight. He is scooping Cheese-its from the bowl next to him as he polishes and perfects his words. We write in silence like this for a while. And just like that I’m done with mine.
Miles This Weekend: 217
Total Miles: 1801
Camp: Jason’s Townhome, Davis, CA