Yesterday I bought new tires for my car at Costco and decided to wait while they mounted them. How hard could it be to kill an hour and a half in Costco? Pretty hard, it turned out. All that stuff! All of a sudden I found myself pushing one of those giant grocery carts and filling it with giant jars of snack foods. A giant plastic jar of mixed nuts. An even more gigantic jar of peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets. Tools and books and DVD sets.
Toward the end of my wait I stopped by one of the food sample carts, where a guy was selling foccacia bread. I ate a sliver and it was so good, my hand reached out on its own for a bag. The guy stopped me. He said I had to buy three bags. I asked how much. He said $12.99. If he had said $13.99 or $11.99 I would have bought them, but I was still smarting from a $12-and-change shellacking I’d taken at Five Guys a couple of days back, and that was it for me. Back went the foccacia, the tools, the books, the DVDs, the nuts. I kept the peanut butter pretzels, though, and ate a couple on the way home. Nothing like a new set of tires!
So today I ordered new rubber for my motorcycle. I’m going on a three-day ride to Flagstaff and northern Arizona later this month and will probably put at least 1,500 miles on the bike. The tires that are on the bike will do for the trip, but by the end of October it’ll be time for new ones, so I might as well get a set and keep them on hand.
Our granddaughter Taylor has a softball game in Phoenix on Saturday the 24th. We’re driving up that morning, Donna in the car and me on the motorcycle. We’ll see the game, go out to dinner with Taylor and the rest of the family, and stay overnight in a hotel. Sunday I’ll ride north and Donna will drive back to Tucson. My ride north will be along the Mogollon Rim to Flagstaff, where I’ve booked a room at a military camp for Sunday and Monday night. Monday’s out & back destination is unclear … depends on the weather, I suppose … and Tuesday I’ll ride back to Tucson.
We took our friends Ed and Sue out to dinner last night. Ed’s my motorcycle riding and maintenance buddy, and naturally we talked about riding. Ed just got back from a long California ride, similar to the one I took last year. If you’re a biker, you know that just talking about riding with your biker buds is enough to get you fired up. Suffice it to say I’m now fired up for my northern Arizona ride!
Speaking of two-wheeling, we went bicycling with our Trail Trash friends this morning. I took this photo at our halfway point, the entrance to the Saguaro National Monument off Old Spanish Trail:
Donna and Dee are parking their bicycles; Darrell and Mary Anne are sitting on the bench; bicyclists from another group are standing to the left. It’s a popular stop for bicycle riders.
I laid down for a short nap and had an unusually vivid dream. I’m in charge of a covert special ops team on a mission to exfiltrate civilians from some north African country in the throes of revolution. We’re supposed to be covert, so we’re hiding between some storage containers in a seaport, waiting for dark. All of a sudden two big UN Chinook helicopters come whopping in and land on the concrete next to our position, and thousands of screaming, fleeing civilians come running out from behind other storage containers. Black people, brown people, yellow people, adults and children, all running for the helicopters. They’re leading horses and camels, pulling wagons piled with suitcases and bedding, carrying dogs, cats, and chickens. It’s pandemonium. All I can think is, “Shit, we’re blown!” So we start running too. Would have made a good movie, that dream. Maybe it was a movie, and I was just remembering it.
It’s hard to miss the media buildup to the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Some of it … newly released audiotapes and previously-unheard stories … is fascinating. But most of it, I think, is commercial, meant to snare watchers, readers, and listeners. I instinctively turn away from it. The breathess coverage of a potential threat to New York City and/or Washington DC seems especially cynical to me, almost as if the reporters hope something will happen. Enough, y’all. Knock it off.
Boy, won’t I look silly if something does happen?