10 posts tagged “time travel”
For Joel and Lilia - two more chapters (and one to go!!), both from one year ago today, May 1, 2006...
Chapter Five: Sisyphus
I got to 4th and Townsend a couple minutes early, bought my monthly pass for May, and boarded the train. Having discovered on Friday, when Michael got on the train and interrupted my conversation with the woman with the hypnotic eyes and amazing smile, that she was going to Point Reyes for the weekend with "John", my Chronicle perusing stayed uninterrupted and unencumbered from trying to keep a seat free to 22nd. When she got on I politely asked how her weekend was, but reined in my award-winning grin knowing that they were in short supply and that I'd need to reserve them for whoever I was foolish enough to envision growing old with in the urban equivalent of a house with a white picket fence this week. Or at least that's how I'd expected my Monday morning to play out as I walked down 4th Street in the sun.
I bought my Chronicle from the little old Chinese man who always tries to up-sell me to the New York Times, freed $139.25 from my bank account for the monthly 3 zone Caltrain pass, and headed out onto the train platform and up to my regular seat. The train remained surprisingly empty for a Monday morning, and I didn't suspect that it was due to a lot of the Peninsula commuters participating the in the "Day without Immigrants" protests and marches. Still at 4th and King as I finished with the front section, I wondered if I still worked in the restaurant if I'd have been taking the day off to stand in solidarity. While pondering that, hypnotic eyes and perfect teeth takes the seat opposite and across the aisle with an extra measure of bounce, and smiles at me.
"How was Point Reyes?", I politely ask over the edge of my paper.
"It was great - one of the guy's mom owns a little cottage up there, and we just hung out having drinks and BBQing all day, and then yesterday there was another BBQ. Lots of eating for the entire weekend. How did the dinner for your friend come out?"
I tell her that it came out fine, and settle back into the paper after an uncomfortable silence. Michael stops by her seat and rests a knee on the edge of the adjoining one, and asks if she was OK on Sunday morning. She answers that she was, that she just needed some coffee to get rid of the headache - he laughs at her, she says no, really, that once she'd had the coffee the headache went away. He removes his knee and heads back to his seat, I head into the Sports' section hoping the Red Sox can pull it out against the Yankees later in the day, and she and I meet up at the crossword about the same time. She seems pre-occupied, almost sad or disappointed, the capped end of her pen pursed between her lips.
I finish the crossword just as we pull out of Palo Alto, put the Classified section's crossword and cryptoquip away in my bag along with my pen, and get up as we jerk past San Antonio.
"Have a nice day," I say. She looks up and says, "See you tomorrow."
Chapter Six: Waiting for Godot (with a beer in hand, on the 383)
I'd planned to leave work at 5:00 to catch the 5:10 shuttle to Mountain View for an exciting evening of dipping into my earthquake preparedness kit, Jeopardy, and Law & Order re-runs. At 5:05 I knew that wasn't happening... let's just say that the reasons I'd taken this gig had passed months ago, and the levels of incompetence flying around made me want to leave pronto. But since quitting on principal wasn't an option after a year of working on my own project and running up the credit cards, I swapped out my usual scowl, and suggested we could revisit issues in the morning. And then I strolled out the door.
Standing on the northbound platform at Mountain View, doing the math in my head as to when my bills would be paid down and I could quit, I watched the train pull in just on time. Once the seven bicyclists got off, I got on, and made a left into the forward-most car, where hypnotic eyes and perfect smile was sitting next to Michael.
"Would you like a beer?", she said to me as I cleared the doorframe into the car. "I'd love a beer," I replied, was given an ice-cold Tecate, and took the seat behind them on the west side of the train, against the window so I could see the sun on her face through the back of the seats. I drank my beer and smiled as she finished hers and cracked open another, and pretended to do the Classified's crossword.
Things learned: Michael's moving to Atlanta to be with his girlfriend; neither of them know that the history of having a lime in your beer was to prevent scurvy; she has a garden and likes Powell's Soul Food, didnt' realize they'd re-opened over on Eddy and Fillmore, rides a purple Specialized messenger-bike style bike, and has a great black-outlined flame tattoo way down on her back.
She stayed on until 4th and King. I broke the Caltrain rules of bicyclists getting off the train after the walkers, letting her detrain before me. We walked together to the terminal, and I thanked her for the beer, wished her luck with her gardening this evening, and said "see you tomorrow". She smiled back with a smile that said more than the absence of words in the din of the train station.
Tomorrow: The Final Chapter!
Here you go, Lilia:
Remnants of the Cold War (on a Thursday morning)
Finishing the Cryptoquip between Mountain View and Palo Alto on the 373 Wednesday night (O equals F, and "QO L ULVUDXX YLF OLCZDC VDCD MLTTDB LMB JSK QM JCQXAM, YD ZQWYK KCP KA WDK ASK AM TLUD" equals "If a lawless hay farmer were nabbed and put in prison, he might try to get out on bale") I read my horoscope. Horoscopes, as a rule, are vague enough to tell you what you want them to about your upcoming day. I'd always found that reading them at the end of the day made them prove their merit. And Wednesday's wanted to: People are ready to go. Why are you riding the brake? Don't let anxiety call the shots. The only way to tell if things will work is to try. Maybe I should have read that before the woman with the hypnotic eyes and perfect smile took the crowded three-top one row up instead of the empty four-top I was holding for her on the 324 that morning. Maybe then I would have eked out more than a "see you tomorrow?" as I de-trained at Mountain View and have gotten more than a hesitant smile in return.
Union Square smelled of freshly cut grass as I walked through it the next day at 7:30am. Whether it was the spring air or the day before's horoscope or the Negronis and burgers from the previous night, I decided that today would be the day I said something to the woman, be it aloud or via a clandestinely passed note on the airmail stationary I'd tossed in my bag as I left my apartment on Bush.
The short, thin, married woman with the 4 inch Frankenstein platform shoes reading Motherhood Without Guilt, "Without" presenting itself in a self-empowered underlined Sharpie-style font, capitalized and giving the finger to Chicago style, snarled at me as I absently flipped the pages of the Chronicle while looking to see if my recent obsession had gotten on at 22nd. Ignoring my thoughts on horoscopes I found myself in the Classifieds and read A matter that was supposed to be signed, sealed, and delivered is suddenly postponed. Don't react too hastily. This could be advantageous. Somewhere, someone's glass is half-full.
...the story continues:
Horseshoes and Handgrenades
I woke up, muscles sore from having recently doubled my workout, eyes bleary from a three-scotch-and-soda consolation prize for not seeing the woman with the hypnotic eyes on Caltrain 379 last night. As I walked down 4th and crossed Howard and passed the carousel and underused Yerba Buena Gardens, I decided that if she was on the train again today I would actually talk with her, and get her name, and see if she wanted to go out for a drink.
I got on the train and took my usual seat, and by the time the doors had closed at 4th and Townsend my stomach had butterflies and I kept willing the window seat in front of me to stay empty. The train jerked out of the station and the seat remained free.
Caltrain has been conducting a survey over the past week or so, same one both directions, with the usual suspects of questions: where did you get on, how did you get there, where are you getting off, how are you proceeding from there, what type of ticket do you have, how long have you been riding Caltrain for, did some marketing thing that Caltrain did last August convince you to ride more frequently. Part of me would like to believe the surveys are to figure out how to better provide service to those of us stuck on a train an hour each way each day. That part is beaten up regularly by the part of me that knows that the surveys will be used to cut back on trains and stops. Trying to stick up for the part of me that was being beaten up, I took the survey again after telling the woman that I'd taken it the week before, and she explained that they wanted passengers to fill it out in both directions. Screwy, and I'd love to know how that skews the numbers. However, it did distract me for a fraction of a moment.
By the time we approached 22nd the butterflies had evolved into giant Tongan fruit bats, and I looked out the window to see the guy with the short hair, off-the-rack suit, and sneakers dawdling down the stairs as he always did, slowly validating his ticket, taking his sweet time as the train waited for him. I turned my head and saw the woman from the day before come up the stairs to the second level of the car, ringlets of hair playing over her eyes, grey corduroy jacket and light green skirt, a tease of skin just before a different pair of black mid-calf boots. Her eyes met mine and we both smiled. The window seat across from me was still empty, but she opted for the seat directly across the aisle and facing me. She sat and gave me a look that I have an afternoon set aside for, and proceeded to reach in her handbag. She says that she almost didn't make the train this morning, pulls out an iPod, smiles again, and pulls her laptop out of her work bag. Maybe she has to catch up on some work I thought, until she grimaced and put it away, looking at me as if I knew why. My guesses were "dead battery" and "clever ruse to talk with me". While I'm not sure if I was right on my first guess, I knew full well I was dead wrong on the second, as she pulled out the new Wired, put in her earbuds, and started reading.
All of three minutes had passed since we left 22nd and I didn't know what I should do. The train delaying off-the-rack suit and sneakers guy took the window seat, and the survey woman came round again to get the passengers who had just boarded. The woman with the green skirt takes one, as does the guy who's sitting where she should be, and I page through the rest of the paper, not reading a word of it.
When we arrived at Hillsdale my crossword was a mess of black ink and crossouts, and I wondered what day in school I'd missed where they taught how to have social skills. I couldn't exactly force a conversation, and I certainly couldn't just give her the business card I'd subtly extracted from the wallet in my left back pocket to my right back pocket and suggest we go out sometime. But I sure as hell couldn't just let this lie.
As we left Palo Alto my time was running out. My second-to-last ditch chance to talk with her would be when my favorite conductor came through to check tickets: she'd take her earbuds out, and then I could at least talk with her a little, how was work yesterday and your name is and that kind of thing. The one day he doesn't do it, and it's today. The best laid plans of mice and men, and I was definitely a mouse.
My last ditch chance to talk with her was a failure from the moment the train delayer got on at 22nd took his survey. I thought I could wait until we got to Mountain View, and as everyone was getting up and me talking wouldn't pierce the dead silence on the train, I could then say, "by the way, I'm Luke," and suggest going out for a drink sometime. But having glanced at his survey, his destination was San Jose, so he'd be sitting right there the entire time. "Fuck it," I thought, "he doesn't know you, and you don't give a shit anyway." And then she'd be stuck on the train with him for the next 13 minutes, and might feel as awkward as I was not wanting to saying anything in front of this guy. Again, I wondered what day of school I missed.
"Now arriving Mountain View, Mountain View station", and I rose as the train stopped, and she looked up and took an earbud out. I said "I hope you have a nice day - see you tomorrow morning?" She grinned and said so long as she made the train.
In that Joel and Lilia felt left hanging, the next chapter to this morning's post...
Monday Evening on the 379
I gave the product manager the rundown of where things were at and "next steps" at 4:59pm and left to catch the 5:10pm shuttle to Mountain View station. Lighting a cigarette as I stepped out of the semi-permanent temporary offices, the grin on my face tore straight through and I wondered if the woman with the hypnotic eyes had had a similar day, dealing with work, toying with thoughts of the morning commute, hoping her subtlety of "I take the 5:45 train home" had caught.
Shelley dropped us off at 5:31pm, six minutes before the next Baby Bullet to SF, 27 minutes before when the 5:45 out of San Jose would stop at Mountain View. Lighting another cigarette I laughed to myself and happily let the 373 blow by, took my time smoking it, and meandered over to the northbound platform at Mountain View. I stopped at a position that would allow me to get on the first car, hoping that the mention of the 5:45 from San Jose was a flirtatious gesture, and that I'd see her and we'd talk on the way back to the City and I'd either ask her out for a drink or at least get her name.
The train arrived 2 minutes early; I got on at the most northward car, and proceeded to walk through - girl on cellphone, guy with far too many bags, couple headed to the Giants' game, nothing. Next car, same story, all the way through five cars to the back of the train.
Taking a seat in the last car of the train, I took out the morning's unfinished crossword. Until that point I'd been in a better mood all day than I'd been in a long time. While the couple in front of me played with their season's tickets and worried about the train getting them to PacBell in time for the opening pitch, I finished the adjoining Cryptoquip and kicked myself for hoping that she'd sit in the same seat tomorrow morning.
So besides seeing Hot Fuzz over the weekend (which was *awesome*), having dinner at Caffe Macaroni, and watching the Red Sox sweep the Yankees (and hit four back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs in the 3rd), ain't a whole lot to Vox about as late. And so, on this fine spring day, I give you another entry from another blog from a year ago today.
Prometheus Scratches an Itch (Crosswords on the 324)
According to the 2003 US Census, of the 751,682 people living in San Francisco, 369,828 of them are women, and the folks at the Census Bureau must be married and/or get enough on the side that they don't see the value in breaking that data set down into "age range" and "availability".
On any given morning, Caltrain transports roughly 16,016 people to and from the Peninsula. If one were to arbitrarily apply the US Census' breakdown of SF's population being 49.2% female to that, it would make 7,879 north and southbound commuters on the train women, making some 3,940 of them going one way or the other. And on any given Caltrain Baby Bullet, there are 675 seats, spread across five cars, which if the the train were full should statistically see 332 of those seats occupied by women, 66 per car. The trains are seldom full, and the math started to fall apart somewhere around the point where the Census stopped at their breakdown of their data.
I boarded Caltrain 324 at 7:57am and took my usual seat on the west side of the upper section of the bike car, unzipped my new North Face jacket, and started flipping through the Chronicle. Two married women in their late 50s were talking with each other and the sleepy early 20s guy across the aisle from them with his sneakers on the floor and his feet on the seat in front of him. The train left 4th and Townsend and I'd coursed through the front and the Bay Area sections by the time we arrived at 22nd. As I refolded the Bay Area and the train lurched from 22nd I noticed a woman sit diagonally across from the guy with his feet on the chair, up one and diagonally across from me, attempting to wake him so he'd move his sneakers from in front of next to his chair, and the conductor mumbled an announcement over the loudspeaker. She looked at me and with her eyes asked if I heard what the conductor had said - I shrugged my shoulders in response; even if I'd been able to make out his mumblings, my focus was ruined for the rest of the trip.
Captain Kirk style jeans hemmed to just above her mid-calf black boots, patterned brown lace-up shirt, leather jacket, short fingernails, no ring, the most exquisite smile and perfect teeth, curly ringlets of black hair to her shoulders, and eyes that could convince you to do anything they wanted them to. She took out her copy of the Chronicle, folded it over at the back section of the Datebook section, and got points for reading Miss Manners and Dear Abby. Between glances and grins she folded it over again, tapping it four times, onetwothree----four with the forefinger on her right hand to flatten the crease, and took out a pen to do the crossword as I was scanning the baseball stats and scores I already knew. About three minutes later I was just about caught up to her, below the fold of the back page of the Datebook, respect to Dear Abby for explaining that you can't get AIDS or Hepatitis from shaking hands with your co-workers, and folding my paper into quarters to do the crossword. I rolled my pen across my knuckles as she tapped her pen to her chin, and we caught eyes again, her perfect teeth smiling at me, my grin tearing a hole in the left side of my face. I burned through the crossword, and flipped to the second crossword in the Classified section, and quickly lost interest as the train paused at Hillsdale and there was some other announcement about us being on our way shortly. As far as I was concerned we could stay there all day, so long as she kept smiling at me.
The train started moving south and the woman and I locked eyes again. "Good to see you again," she says. "You too," I manage past my lips, knowing full well I've never met this woman before. We continue to talk a bit, her asking if I'm still contracting down here, me saying that I'm trying to figure it out; her saying she's been doing it for two years and you get used to it, me thinking get her name you fucking-spineless-excuse-for-a-human-being. She asks if I get off in Mountain View, I say yes, and while I've known since 22nd that she's getting off in San Jose from the backpack that has her company's name embroidered on it nestled on the window seat next to her in front of the sleeping 20 year old, I ask her where she gets off, but not in the tone of voice I'd like to have. She says, "San Jose," I nod, and as the train is now leaving Palo Alto I start to gather my leftover crossword for the commute home. The air is static: I want to ask her her name, her eyes are asking more than her lips are saying. I stand up.
"So what train do you usually take back to the City?" She says the 5:45 from San Jose, and we're now approaching Mountain View, and I say it was great talking with her, she says the same, and I say have a good day through the gaping hole in my left cheek. I get to the foot of the stairs and tell myself to go back upstairs and introduce myself, and the train pulls into Mountain View. I get off the train in a better mood than I've been in for over a year and a half, and decide on the shuttle ride and walk to the semi-permanent temporary offices that I'll be taking the connecting 5:58 Mountain View train home this evening.
In that there hasn't been anything particularly Voxtastic going on lately (unless y'all want to hear about how I scored tickets to go see Air, or that I'm psyched that Hot Fuzz comes out this weekend, or that I heart SF for the fact that there's a 4:20 showing of The Big Lebowski at the Red Vic on April 20th, or that I'm thrilled that Heroes picks up again next Monday... see? Told you ain't a whole lot going on here...), I'll give you another post from another blog from a year ago today. At least this one has a little more context, as a year ago was the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. Thus making today the 101st anniversary. And I'm done rambling.
Three Days (April 18, 2006)
The incessant droning of my alarm clock blurred with the sound of helicopters somewhere in the close vicinity of my apartment. Through half-opened eyes I made out that I'd slept later than planned - it was 4:15am, which meant that my intentions of heading down to watch the centennial celebration and memorial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake at Lotta's Fountain weren't going to pan out. Considering I hadn't slept at all the night before, I closed my eyes and opened them again at 5:15am.
Over the past year San Francisco's emergency services' office has been pushing the whole idea of "72 hours", that all good San Franciscans should have earthquake preparedness kits at the ready, that the kit should keep you for three days with water and food and batteries and crowbars. "Three days" seems like a somewhat arbitrary number, and "72 hours" sounds more like a marketing pitch than solid "being ready" advice. Hell, three days after Katrina the only people really helping out in New Orleans were a couple of CNN reporters and Sean Penn, and he got crucified for it. Just because it took three days to get the fires to die down in 1906 doesn't mean that the next big one will stick to a schedule.
After a couple cups of coffee and a hundred arm curls I strolled down the hill past where a hundred years ago Dennis Sullivan fell two stories when the quake struck, and the hotel next door fell into his firehouse. He died three days later. I meandered down to Market, which was closed to non-pedestrian traffic up to 4th Street. Turning down 4th I was somewhat relieved that I'd opted for an extra hour of sleep - half the people looked like they'd stepped out of a Renaissance fair.
As I crossed under bridge construction and neared Bryant I took mental note of my apartment, and realized with the exception of the two working batteries in the Maglite that I always carry with me, my apartment is the poster child for what they don't want you to do in terms of being ready. The doorframes in my studio apartment are capped with antique carpenter's tools (nail set, chisel, wrench), and currently my "preparedness kit" consists of half a bottle of Tanqueray, an unopened bottle of Veuve Clicquot, two PowerBars, and five stale Lucky Strikes someone left behind a few months back; it's unlikely that I could make the champagne and gin stretch for two days, nevermind three.
As the 324 headed towards 22nd, I finished reading the front part of today's Chronicle, which was a reprint of Thursday, April 19, 1906's paper, carefully folded it back up, and put it in my bag to send to my grandfather. A woman in her mid-40s sat down across from me, good looking in the kind of way that would get husbands into trouble with their wives at the weekly PTA meetings, and likely encouraged it. Black shoes, black dress trousers, black blazer covering a pink "Eat your heart out - I'm taken" tshirt, small diamond earrings, wedding band. We exchanged a few smiles as the train jostled us towards San Jose. I scanned the rest of the paper, and as the train pulled out of Palo Alto, decided that a large part of me really wants the next big one to happen now. Maybe put things into perspective.
Getting off the train in Mountain View I realized that for my lack of an earthquake kit, I was probably a hell of a lot more prepared than most of the other people around me.
Another post from a year ago:
Hands and Shoes (on the 324 to Mountain View)
The heels of my engineer's boots tapped against each other as my scarred and torn-cuticled fingers flipped through a re-run of a novel, and a pretty girl with glasses and barrettes and dressy-but-likely-functional work boots skimmed through a pile of papers two seats up and across the aisle; the suits behind her furtively passed a check under the table to one another after inspecting each others' passports. The sun had decided to end her Lent promise of abstinence and let her hair down; she'd kept her legs crossed thirty-nine of the past forty-eight days here in San Francisco, and apparently with Easter passed was ready for some action. Unfortunately, sun didn't equal warm weather, so for a sunny spring day, there were disappointingly few short flowy skirts on the walk down 4th, or on Caltrain (with the notable, if not increasingly not interesting, exception of the species-and-genetic-diversity-deep-brown-eyed-girl, knees just showing at the hem of a white linen skirt, red-strappy espradrilles with blood red toenails, fresh blister on the back of her left ankle from a weekend probably spent breaking in new shoes).
The guy sitting diagonally across from me got on just as we were pulling out of 4th and King, and got a little more enjoyment of the conductor's "awwwwlllll BOARD!" than the other folks around us; he got a few extra points from me for acknowledging it aloud. He fiddled with his laptop, fingernails bitten short, but soft-ish hands - no nicks and cuts, far too much hair on the back of his hands, pink. I decided he was headed to meet with a client over having a job interview - his knock-off brogues with older shoelaces were freshly polished, his face cleanly shaven, but the day-pass, uncertainty as to just where the Mountain View stop was, and three unbuttoned buttons on his shirt in place of a tie didn't equal "interview" in my book, even if the Bay Area seldom requires a tie for any event.
At 22nd an expensive pair of dress-casual sneaker shoes tucked themselves under an expensive pair of olive trousers and pricey cotton-twill dress shirt and $70 hair cut. Manicured nails and hands that made the likely-client-meeting-guy's hands look downright thuggish massaged a shiny new MacBook Pro with a little decal affixed to the front - "Property of the US Government", bar code, "NASA". I chuckled to myself after the conductor came through to check for tickets, as his wallet-worn ten-day pass called out his woeful lack of observational skills - he'd asked where there were plugs on the train so he could keep massaging his little toy, and I'd informed him that they were mostly only at the seats with tables. Rocket scientist my ass.
The pretty girl with the glasses and barrettes put her pile of papers in her Van Gogh print museum tote bag and got off at Hillsdale, sidling through the Caltrain parking lot as the 324 continued south. I put my re-run of a novel away somewhere just north of Palo Alto and wondered at what point the customer service agent on the other end of the phone was going to inform the guy in the window across the way that transferring a cellphone number takes longer for incoming calls than outgoing, and steeled myself for the day ahead.
One year ago today, from a blog I was writing last year...
Thursday, April 06, 2006
The Royal Donut House (8:59am)
I boarded the 324 Baby Bullet a couple minutes later than my usual 7:56am. Either my alarm clock(s) didn't go off, or the fact that I couldn't fall asleep last night caught up with me and allowed me to dream through turning them both off, to awake still in a dream seeing a screen display (with accompanying computerized female voice audio) saying "Destination at Six - Four - Two". 6:42. Crap. How can you be "possibly late for work" three hours before you're going to get there? No time for a work out, barely enough time to make coffee, quickly check email, and have a quick shower and pack up my laptop before heading down to 4th & King.
I got on board and my formerly usual seat was already taken, as was my currently usual seat (you want to sit on the right hand side of the train in the morning so as to not be blinded by the sun as it rises and blares into the train). I took the next one back, and as I started writing the PA came on like someone holding a live mic to an amp, and there was some garbled message about "-24 -ot -n --press, ---s -r--n will make -ll l-cal stops". OK, so the train's not an express this morning. The very cute young woman who placed her bag on the seat in front of me to put her shoulder bag on the rack above asked if I knew what the delay was, that she had just gotten on the train and hadn't heard the whole message. Very cute to very married I realized as I saw the ring on her finger, and told her that they hadn't really said, but the train was going to be a local instead of the usual Baby Bullet. Caution, the doors are about to close, and we slowly leave the station, and again over the live mic PA we're told that the train's now a local due to "an incident" in Mountain View, and they'll let us know more as they do. Shortly after 22nd Street they do, and they say that the trains are going to be moving slowly, and that it was a fatality in Mountain View, and trains are stopping at either Redwood City or San Antonio, and they'll let us know more as they do. I share a look with the very married girl, she calls her office and gets them to re-route their shuttle buses; I call my semi-permanent temporary office and get voice mail. Around Millbrae my office calls me and I tell them that it makes more sense for me to go back to the City to work from home than to wind up no where near the shuttle. As I get off at Burlingame with a decent contingency of other southbound passengers, a northbound train is departing. I light a cigarette off of the platform, and figure I'll be back at my apartment about the same time I usually get to work.
After about twenty minutes I realize the error in my ways. If there was "an incident" in Mountain View and all southbound trains were being stopped, clearly all northbound trains were being stopped as well. The train that was departing Burlingame going north as I got off was obviously the last train that made it through. As the sun shown down for the first time in practically a month, faithful Giants' fans started showing up on the platform, blowing off work for today's home opener against the Braves. As they checked their watches and cell phones for the time, stretching their necks and peering over their reach-around sunglasses to see where the train was, the news slowly got around that we might be waiting for a while. One of the guys in full opening day paraphernalia (the Giants jacket, the hat with the pins, the season ticket in a see-through plastic sleeve, the orange Scottsdale, AZ spring training tshirt) Sprint walkie-talkies one of his friends coming up from San Jose, and those within overhearing distance are told that trains are just starting to move north at Sunnyvale. Giving me at least 25 minutes to kill, and I notice the "Royal Donut House" right there by the station.
I grew up on the East Coast, so I know my donuts. "Happy Donut" might be nice after a night of drinking, but nothing compares to a chocolate donut with chocolate frosting and chocolate jimmies, and it should cost around 35 cents. When I first moved out here, and was walking down Third Street to work for the first time, I made the mistake of getting excited as I saw a donut shop, and stopped in to discover what passes for donuts in SF, and to see that a half-dozen donuts cost four bucks. Sure, now there's Krispy Kreme out here, but back then, that really wasn't an option (and, no disrespect to Krispy Kreme, but they only taste good when they're 30 seconds off of the conveyor belt. Next time you're in Vegas, walk into the front entrance of the Excalibur, veer to the right around the flowers and such, quick right up the escalators to the second floor, left at the top of the escalator, then your first right, then first left, and there's a Krispy Kreme that typically has glazed donuts pouring off the machine at around 3:15am.). So I couldn't believe my luck, upon walking into the Royal Donut House, to find that it was straight out of the East Coast. Old time feel, two little old Chinese ladies running the place, old fashioned donuts and donuts with frosting and jimmies for 40 cents a pop, coffee for a buck, and a flurry of activity both sides of the counter.
When they look at their books at the end of the year, will they wonder why they had a spike in sales on a Thursday morning in early April?
... so I could be at Glastonbury in 2004 to see the Orbital live...
Two years ago today the Red Sox won the World Series.
Two years ago last night I flew back in to SF from Rome, turned on ESPN, and saw that the Red Sox were 3-0 in the World Series against the Cardinals. The next morning, when I called my folks, who live on the Cape, to let them know I was back safe, the first thing my mom said to me was "your Grandfather and I have decided that if the Red Sox don't win tonight's game, we're sending you back to Italy."
See, I'd left for Italy two weeks earlier. When I left the country, the Red Sox had just lost the first two games of the ALCS against the Yankees. I got on a plane, and by the time we touched down in Rome, Game 3 had already been played. It was funny on the layover in Germany, then landing in Rome, then on the train, trying to figure out who the Americans were, and just when they'd gotten in from the States, and if they knew who'd won Game 3. At some point (I think the next morning) I saw on CNN international, after sports news about tennis and futbol and kite flying that the Red Sox had lost to the Yankees. 0-3. Crap.
We spent the next few days in Rome, wandering around, going to the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, back streets, the Spanish Steps, and thanks to Mario went to Due Ladroni for one of the most rockstar Italian dinners I've ever had. And along the way caught a two second update on Sky News or CNN that, somehow, the Red Sox won Game 4.
We met up with Jennifer and Darrin and headed north to the villa in Tuscany, where they were getting married. One of the other couples there were from Boston, and over espresso on the steps of the villa's kitchen, before heading off to San Gimignano or Siena, we talked about "did they win Game 5" and "what ifs" and such.
The wedding dinner was orginally going to be osso bucco prepared by a little old lady who lived a few miles up the road. The day before the wedding, news came to us that the osso bucco woman had taken ill, and would not be able to cook the meal. Jennifer came to me, knowing I used to be a professional cook, and asked if I could cook the wedding meal. Maybe four courses? For forty? "No problem," I said, and set about sketching out the menu on a piece of butcher's paper, looking up the Italian words for the foodstuffs I'd need to buy, doing the pound to kilogram translation, and steeling myself for a trip to the local supermarket in Castelfiorentino.
The morning of the wedding, armed with my shopping list and translations and the knowledge that the Red Sox had amazingly won Game 6 against the Yankees, I headed to the Coop. The previous day's cockiness about cooking a four course meal for forty, for a wedding, no less, started to wane as I stared at the case of chickens, kilograms to pounds math scurrying far far away from my brain. Then I found myself surrounded by all the old women in the town, descending upon the chicken case, reaching out to take them. And then, raising my voice, and in my best American, said "back off ladies, these are mine". And took every last chicken in the case, save one. And two bags of mussels. Several kilograms of fresh porcini mushrooms. Bunches upon bunches of fresh basil. A huge block of Parmigiano Reggiano. Pancetta. Fresh buffalo mozzarella. Onions. Tomatoes. Garlic, lemons, rosemary, butter, eggs, pasta, oil, wine, and dry vermouth.
I spent the rest of the day planning and prepping and cooking in the villa's huge kitchen, Louis Prima blasting away as an accompaniment. The courses all came together perfectly, and the meal was a huge success (and the wedding beautiful).
The next day I found out that the Red Sox managed to beat the Yankees in the ALCS, and were on to the World Series against the Cardinals. They seemed to be doing a whole lot of winning once I left the country. Which is why, upon returning to the States, my mother only half-jokingly said that she and my grandfather were going to send me back to Italy if the Red Sox lost Game 4 of the World Series. Lucky for their wallets, two years ago tonight, the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918.
Two years... huh. Funny how dates can resurface memories, and make you nostalgic about things you thought you'd forgotten about.
