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I was giddy with the night
air. Unseasonably sunny and mild today,
after strenuous fun of packing 40-foot
semi trailer tight with Mt. Rainier
High School goodies I rode by a house in
Ballard after work to check
on a porch that needs repair. Afterwards, I
boarded athe 44 with my
bike, one of my favorite things being putting
the bike in the bus rack
and letting the diesel do all the work up the
long oblique hill from
Ballard to Fremont which cuts from 56th to
46th streets across about
20 avenues. Aboard, an older gentleman gets on
with a wheeled caddy
and what looks like an oxygen tank. Good for
him, I think, still out and
about despite his health problems. I breathe
in deeply through my nose
and savor my still decent lung
capacity--although I do worry about
all the dust and other particulates I'm
exposed to doing salvage
work. I wear a good filter a lot of the time,
but not all of the time,
and most nights my snots are black and once in
a while I feel a
something in my lungs. Anyway, a young guy
sitting near the man
with the tank asks what it is. "It's a
tripod," the man replies. "Oh,
I thought it was an oxygen tank," the younger
man says. "Every-
body does," the older guy says and sets to
fiddling with a cable
release, conversation over. Must be a
professional. (Last night on
the same route the driver wore a little paper
dust mask and I wish I'd
asked why. My guess was he was hiding a
pimple. I mean, really,
those little paper masks don't filter out
much, if anything.) Got off the
bus at the top of the hill, took my bike out
of the rack, and set myself
for the long coast home. But then I stopped at
Adria and Craig's. They
live in the neighborhood now, in a place
remarkably like ours except
theirs is a lot warmer and (so far) much
tidier. They were watching
Family Feud and the survey said the number one
place people whisper
is the library, although both mother and
daughter first guessed "church."
That's funny. You only whisper in church when
you're not supposed to
be talking. After photographing this wicker
torso and giving Adria a
pornographic two of clubs ("Carlos") I found
in the street, I resumed my
gorgeous evening bicycle roll downhill and
thought there's nothing
better than this and resolved to come
home and write about it....
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