Last night I cleaned the trumpet, having put it in a tub of water to soak the night before, and tried to practice but ... there's a place on my lip that dried and I could not resist peeling it, and I thought my having a rough tone was due to the horn being dirty, hence the cleaning. It's good I cleaned it, but I need to take better care of my lip!
I was up in time to go to the cop store, so I did, to find that they're selling only to cops now, no friends etc.
Theoretically it should be a lot safer for a bicyclist with so much less traffic, but it seems like the asshole drivers are all still out. I went up onto the sidewalk to avoid one, and evaded a "Karen" in an SUV who no doubt would run me over with no compunction, only to have "Karen" essentially come after me into the driveway (not sure if hers now that I think about it) and had Ms. Fatness bitch me out about riding on the sidewalk. "It's illegal" etc. I said it's legal except for a few places downtown, and she said she'd just asked a cop (no, she didn't) and I said she's the menace, that she'd run me or anyone over without the slightest bit of guilt because her coffee's getting cold or any reason or none at all, and that went over about as well as expected. I asked her how I, on a 40lb vehicle, is more of a menace than a 4,000lb vehicle, and by then she'd pulled in enough that I could get around, I sang out her license plate number a couple of times (they love that) and I went on.
I'm not sure if it's even conscious, but drivers are really out to get anyone who's not also encased in several thousand pounds of metal.
To O'Reilley auto parts where I got more shop towels (and I'll keep buying them as long as they keep disappearing) another Ozium, and a half-size can of lock de-icer to retrofit into an improvised pepper spray. And 3-4 more bottles of HEET. I was explaining how I intended to use Ozium etc., as improvised pepper spray and after the guys there and I got comfortable with each other as frankly it's nice to shoot the shit and have some human interaction, they said they had pepper spray and I got their last Sabre pepper spray for $15. Without the whole song and dance this would never have happened. In fact they didn't crack loose about having pepper spray until after I'd told them about my traffic observations and one of the guys said he know, as he used to ride BMX bikes.
I got back here and put things away, and my old canister of pepper spray re-materialized upstairs, along with a rechargeable flashlight that had disappeared.
A customer had ordered a big box of some kind of medical/laboratory sanitation pads or something, in a big box weighing almost 30 lbs and sent a message saying "When will you ship this?" and I replied "Today" so I packed that, and packed an oscilloscope that in the box and padding weighed almost 50 lbs, and loaded those onto the bike trailer and dropped them off at FedEx.
Then I rode straight back here, had my coffee etc., and packed some small things which I took, without the trailer, to the post office and then went to 99 Ranch. I got 10 more cans of meat/fish, another bottle of "white lightning", 10 packs of Haw Flakes, etc. They're not taking cash so I used my card, and got two $1 coupons which I used to get a couple of tea eggs, and again got right back here and it's a good day because there was no bum contact.
I ate the tea eggs and some other stuff and was about ready to do some practice when I heard a voice outside. Some meth-head has set up with a vehicle I sense he may have freshly stolen or somehow acquired, since he was very busy cleaning it and removing stickers that were on it, and he's out there continually, as meth-heads do, darting around cleaning and re-arranging and then other meth-heads are visiting, including a visit from Ms. Crackhead, and I guess they're exchanging drugs and stolen stuff and enjoying the standard druggie tenor of life.
Since I'm not supposed to be here outside of working hours though, there went practice. The time to practice would have been the time I was out going to the cop store and auto parts store, and hauling things to the post office and FedEx. I need to move my schedule around to where I'm up at 8 or 9.
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