I went to sleep about 5:30 AM and woke up at 2:30 or 3, so not too bad. Last night I contemplated just staying in today, but once I got up and had an ice water and an iced coffee, I decided to stick to the schedule no matter what, and that means on Thursday I go downtown and deposit my pay check, and do various errands downtown.
So I headed out about 3:30, dumped my trash in a can in Japantown and put a bag (I'm using regular sandwich size now) in the blessing box on 6th and then went over to the one on 4th and put one in there too.
Next I rode to St. James Park and tossed the last three to people. But again I had to learn that lesson that there is no such thing as a good bum interaction. There wer a Mexican and a black guy talking there, and I asked if they used tobacco. I had to explain I had pipe tobacco and I wasn't selling it, I was giving it away. I gave the guy a bag and then gave him my last one saying "give it to your friends". I had the bags in a bright red Urban Outfitters bag that I'd found, and the guy asked me for that like I owed it to him. "No way, I'm not givin' up this bag!" I said.
That's the thing with bums. I think largely what's broken about them is their concept of the social contract. For instance, it would never occur to me to demand free ice cream from the Mr. Softee two doors down here. I might offer to buy ice cream, or do chores in exchange for it, but not hassle the people there for it, and wash my POS car in front of their place, with their hose and their water, keeping them from being able to park their trucks in front of their own place. Which is exactly what Crazy Chrissie does, and in fact her car is still a mottled mess of different colors of primer, just completely different shaped spots than a week ago.
A broken concept of the social contract is why if you, for instance, try to help a bum get back on their feet and say, live in your garage, instead of keeping it neat and clean and improving it, they'll invite in a bunch of other bums, hold a bum-party, and may just burn your house down. One time, competing in a sports event, I stayed at a guy's place, a friend of my friend/sponsor, and in exchange I cleaned the downstairs bathroom and over-bought breakfast cereal so the guy would have a box or two extra after I was gone. A bum doesn't think this way. A bum would have pissed on the bed/couch, wiped their shit on the walls of the bathroom, drank any and all booze that was in the house, etc.
The long and short of this is, I'm going to put the bags of tobacco in blessing boxes, and leave 'em at bus stops. Zero bum interaction. And why am I going through all this trouble to give pipe tobacco away? For one thing, it smells lovely. And any smoker who will roll up pipe tobacco is committed to their hobby. It's also useful. You can use it to make your laundry or pack contents smell nice, you can make a tincture to kill bugs or delouse yourself, etc.
Next after the unpleasantness with the bums, I rode over to Lee's and got a sandwich and a water. There were plenty of demonstrators by City Hall and having no car horn to honk, I rode by with my fist raised which went over well. I got a chicken and rice plate lunch and a water and ate under "my" huge pepper tree on 6th.
Done eating, I rode over to my bank and put my paycheck into the ATM so that's taken care of. I always end up thanking myself for doing this on Thursday instead of, well, the next day I'd be downtown would be Saturday.
Then I made a mistake. I rode down to La Dolce Velo to ask about getting a new "Sta-Tru" front wheel to match the new rear I'd gotten just before the shutdown, and to see what their price is for a new bag/pannier set which I knew they sell. The wait took forever, and it was some kid who seemed fresh out of high school helping me, and didn't know his ass from his elbow. He brought out a completely different bag, and said a new wheel would cost $50 or $60. I said I'll think about it, and took off. It was a real waste of their and my time and I felt kind of bad about it.
I rode over to "The Alley" and there was nothing new in the dumpsters. Then I rode home along 6th, not really finding much of anything. I did, however, pick a few nopales from the prickly pears growing by the abandoned supermarket. And the dumpster on 10th yielded 4 lbs of veggies; pickling cucumbers, long string beans, and eggplants. Given the price of veggies these days, that's easily $8 worth.
I made a nice salad with scrounged lettuce and a scrounged cucumber, and then eventually got a practice in. After that, dinner was an interesting dish I kind of invented. First I diced up a scrounged eggplant and simmered it, making admittedly a kind of mush but eggplant mush is still delicious. Fairly quick cooking and doesn't take guggles of oil to cook. When that was done it went in a bowl and then I opened a can of corned beef hash and heated that up with some finely diced ginger. The ginger flavor was very subtle, but the crunchiness it added was nice. A completely unique dish, and a good one.
I then not only got all my packing done - it's running about 20 things each time which is a lot - but got a load of laundry done. It's really not that hard to do with the plunger thing, it just takes getting used to it.
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