Twilight Day

I got up this morning and, after mulling over possible physical activities for the day, decided to go to Orinda for a bike ride. Orinda is an East Bay suburb with no defining characteristics other than pretty good biking (at least, that's what my guidebook of San Francisco area bike rides says!). I never verified that point, because I forgot my cycling shoes which means I couldn't clip into my tiny little pedals which means I couldn't go. I did have a nice drive in though, aside from all the dropped cell phone calls.

Then I hopped in the car and soon discovered the best thing about Orinda -- cheap gas! $2.15 at Shell AND Chevron. Fire up the SUVs baby!

On the mopey drive home, I spotted a Mazda 323 hatchback on the Bay Bridge. It looked oddly familiar, and I drew closer. The license plate...the tell-tale dent in the side...the tell-tale smaller-but-still-visible dent in the other side..the parking permit...the fuzzy dice may have been gone, but that was my old car, sold back in July, still street-worthy! The brakes hadn't gone out on the new owner after all! A new timing belt perhaps had been installed, the oil changed, the radiator flushed! Gotta say, seeing that old car of mine made my wistful for a second, but then I turned up the radio on my seven speakers, rolled open the sunroof, and zoomed on by with the flair of a 2005 model and that crappy piece of crap was soon little else than another speck in the rearview mirror.

On the way my brother called. He asked me if I wanted to play tennis. I said yes and offered to pick him up. Five minutes later he called back and said he had been ambushed by a severe headache. I asked him if he was actually busy washing his hair and couldn't think up a better excuse. (Okay, I asked him that one in my head, but at high volume.) Five minutes later he called me back and offered me a free microwave. I accepted, and altered my freeway entrance strategy for San Francisco so as to swing by his apartment. Five minutes later he called back and rescinded the microwave. I told him that he should have stuck with the headache story.

Got home, nothing to do. No motivation to write today, no pressing deadlines. So I picked up a book I'm reading by Don DeLillo, an alleged master novelist, and continued plugging away. All the characters were the same, the plot was unbelievable and boring, yet onwards I trudged. A hundred pages later I stopped and went to the movie store to pick up a recent, mediocre Will Ferrell movie.

Victory is mine!