Cake was Being Presented

On 13 August I wrote that the day before I was up at 645. My friend and I had to just go to BART.  I was really nervous because we had gotten up so late. The train left Jack London Square at 9:15 and it was 810 as we headed to Civic Center. At 12 street I felt we were doing better. Unfortunately, we stopped for coffee and Blue Bottle is notorious for being slow.

At the station the train hadn't arrived yet. However, I only was able to buy the tickets and the printing took too long. I quit and ran outside. We barely made the train.  The conductor told us we were in their ticket system which was ironic. Some of the Bike Party people from the East Bay were getting on at Emeryville. I was effusive.

We had quiet time at around 950 and it lasted until we got to Fairfield. I got our bikes together and we tried to be quiet about it. At Sacramento I said bye to the bike party people. They remembered my name. We packed up and visited the station. I was alone for a bit. We went to Evangeline's in old town.

I cut some fresh air is Charlie looked at the costumes. She came out and told me to buy a gift so I did that. After that we rode down the river. I try to get a photo of us in the bridge but there is a bunch of problems with the bikes. After that we rode the 25th.

An old acquaintance greeted us at the door. It was great. The dog was crazy so I let the ladies talk and went outside. I soaked my feet in the pool. I played fetch. When I returned inside the ladies were talking and drinking. My old acquaintance said that her hubby was on his way with whiskey.

We sat for another 45 minutes while the ladies shared clothing. I took that as a cue to refactor the bags. In the meantime my friend was dealing almost continuously with noisy chaos. The dog had come in and the door was open. When the hubby arrived I was re-packing the bags out front.  My friend’s new clothes were in there.

We left when they were on their way out. We had an easy time finding my old college classmate’s. The afternoon was quiet. We parked in the driveway and I noticed there were not a lot of people around. However I saw a lot of people I knew.  Especially from my recent trip to Hawaii.

We slowly got to see everyone. I had already had a bunch of whiskey and then I had vodka tonics and margaritas. They were good. I went swimming. I tried not to be a wallflower but avoided interacting too much with the birthday boy for some reason.  I did give him our present. It was a gag but worth it. He said the “you suck” memo pad would get him in trouble at work.

We had tacos and then we had a few other things to eat. A bunch of old acquaintances were there. I made all this noise with a lady and her mother.  I used to know them really well. That was nice. The other birthday boy and I had a conversational distraction. Their younger brother said he would come to stay.

The cake was being presented when my friend and I got ready to go. That was a bummer but people understood. We were tired.  We rode through Land Park and over to city college. We found our hostess' house pretty easy. We set up and wound down. Her fashionable associate showed up for about an hour.  We said good night. There was a lot of noise that night. It was a new room and place.

In the morning at six I was up until 830 we hung out in the living room. At first I thought I was too loud but our hostess is normally up at that time. We had her delicious coffee and I went to the market for milk. I took a picture of Sutterville road and posted it to Twitter.

I started quiet time and left the ladies to talk. My friend shared a lot about me with her. After that I had a meal and packed. Our hostess gave us some clothing. I noted that as I was packing the bike was unbalanced because of this new stuff. When we left it was OK though.

She showed us how to get to Broadway past the brewery. We went to the antique show and they quietly walked around while I watched the bikes. That was a breath of fresh air. They saw a fellow fashionista.

We had missed the noon train but we had a lot of time for the next one. We stopped at Safeway and our hostess voiced her approval at my new role. When my friend came out we said bye to her and road to Amtrak.

We zigzagged and I thought we were safe on our path. At the station we rebuild our bags and went on the train. The conductor insisted we sit upstairs. We hung the bikes and settled into a four seater before I went to the café. It was pretty loud there. We had our snacks all the way back and it became quiet at that point.

It was quiet all the way onto Richmond BART but noisy until 16th. We had to transfer. We walked back to the apartment and took time bringing our stuff upstairs.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.