Wet Wednesday

 On Tuesday, not only did I pack 12 things in a bit of a rush, prioritizing things to go to FedEx that would need the bike trailer, but I did more. 

On my way back from this first trip I dropped by Tom's because I had to go that way anyway to look for "Imperfect Produce" boxes which a place just down from him often leaves out on Tuesdays. Tom had James, his expensive pet, over who was talking and stinking up the place and trying to get this weird street rod thing he'd sold to Tom, running. I asked Tom if he was up for going anywhere for dinner but he was not so in the end I rode home (no boxes out at the place, either) and made a shrimp curry. 

I stayed up all night packing a bunch of small things with the idea that it'd be wet but small things can be enclosed in plastic bags and kept dry, and I'd just ride out, or even walk out and back since I get less mucked up that way, taking the small things to the downtown post office. 

But as I packed, and the night went by, and I kept checking the weather, it looks like I could take a big load with the bike trailer if I just stayed up and went to the post office when it opens at 8:30 and I'd hit FedEx and H Mart on the way back. 

So that's what I did. I packed 21 or 22 things including one big thing so in addition to the 12 I'd done, it came out to 32 or 33 things. I took off at a bit after 8AM, rode up Rogers as the bums would be mostly asleep at that hour, and stopped at the lunch truck that sets up across from Tom's and got a little muffin sandwich with egg and sausage and stuff in it. 

I settled in, in front of Tom's and ate the fillings and tossed the bread to the gulls. Somehow this didn't wake up Tom. 

I rode on up to the post office, and it was really nice. Light traffic, and the sky was doing neat pre-storm things. The post office had hardly anyone there. 

On the way back I ducked into H Mart for garlic, a cucumber, and a package of Hello Kitty butt wipes, the only kind they have right now and I got the 2nd to the last one. I dropped the box off at FedEx and rode out as I always do, the back way, passing by the dumpster where I'd lost my Fry's flash light, hoping some dumpster-diver found it and is making use of it. 

I rode back the way I came and the lunch truck was still there. I was up for a second muffin sandwich, but a guy got it right ahead of me so I got some chicken wings. I went back to Tom's to eat them and Tom got up and we hung out for a bit. He'd just woken up. "I thought you were Mr. Early Morning" I said. 

We hung out and talked a bit and I told him that the problem with the street rod might be gunk in the carburetor jets, that it's a really common problem, that and bad old gas in the float bowls, and how easy to work on those classic Japanese (it's a 4-cylinder Kawasaki engine) motorcycle engines are to work on, particularly the carbs. How I'd re-jetted a bike I had years ago by, being too cheap to buy a DynoJet kit, just drilling the jets out with teeny drill bits going up carefully in size until my test rides around the neighborhood told me it was running right. 

Done hanging out at Tom's, I rode back and because it was so odd and special to be out at this hour, stopped at the lunch truck out on Old Bayshore and got yet another sandwich, and took it back here to eat it and put the carby parts out for the gulls. And went to sleep! 

I woke up around 5. Perfect, actually. The rain started right on cue. The one time it won't be *so* wet is Thursday, tomorrow, so that makes my week interesting. 

Also notice that trumpet practice didn't happen this last 24 hours. I did, however, watch a video on pedal tones which were hard for me before if I could get one at all but now are easy-peasy. Trumpet instructors are always talking about them, which still mystifies me as they're really not used in actual music. At most they're good for goofing on people, like making a tuba sound out of a teeny cornet. 

As it's getting closer to my leaving by a day, every day, I'm thinking more and more about how it'll be when I'm back. One thing that keeps coming to me as a parallel is Episode 41 of the British situation comedy "Are You Being Served?". In this one, a new salesman comes to work at the department store, a Mr. Goldberg. It turns out he knew Captain Peacock, an older salesman who's very full of himself, back in "the old days" when they were in the Army together. He knew Peacock to be a very ordinary, somewhat cowardly, not-at-all stellar troop, and overall Goldberg seems to be very adaptable, able to handle himself well in a proper middle-class department store like Grace Brothers and as well in the Army, on the docks, wherever he is. He gets along well with everyone except of course Captain Peacock, who doesn't appreciate having someone around who sees right through him. 

I liked that episode when I first saw it and love it now. I very much see myself as a Mr. Goldberg these days. There are so, so many things I can do back in Hawaii, and even if I end up street homeless for a bit it doesn't scare me a bit. My older sister, whom I will call Hyacinth as she's a character right out of *another* British sitcom, plays the part of Captain Peacock of course. And like the relation of Goldberg and Peacock, I come not to knock anyone off their pedestal but to say, "Hey now, just relax. Come on down off of there if you like, life's a lot more fun than you've been thinking it is". 

When I was back there in 2003, one thing that surprised me was the level of fear my older sister, whom I adore let there be no two ways about it, lived in. She was scared of her neighbor. When I took her to a place that I'd found served a good mahi-mahi sandwich, she was terrified. She'd gone on a whole unfortunate adventure involving an expensive motor scooter and a badly banged-up knee simply because some nut on the bus had taken a fancy to her and kept appearing when she tried getting around by bus. 

(I'd heard about this last thing in the aftermath and all I could advise was taking cabs and then after 6 months or a year adding up the costs and seeing if it's cheaper than owning a 3rd car, and if not then just getting a 3rd car. But it gives an idea of the Boomer fear of mingling with the hoi polloi if they can avoid it.)

I'd interpreted her fear to mean that Hawaii more dangerous than the mainland but of course it's not. It's just the Boomer fear of, well, everything. I might have come in at the tail-end of Boomer but she, born right in the fat part of the 1950s, is as Boomer as they come. She's done it all - the rollerskating and for a while she had a baton she twirled all over the place and the cat-eye glasses. And the National Spelling Bee which to the true Boomer mind is supposed to set you up for life or something and maybe back then it did. Her idea of being poor was only having a small car where I didn't have a car at all until I was 30. (And I might not have had one until I was 40, except for a small inheritance that I used to pay off the 2nd half of my student loans and buy my first, very used, car.)

There are whole areas of the island of Oahu she won't go because of "bad memories" where I plan to go right to the areas where the bad memories are, because there are good memories there too.