Back in the saddle, naturally

So, it turns out, San Francisco is the best possible city to be going to if you are going to have some kind of car accident and rip the tires off your truck. Hypothetically speaking.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, much earlier than I was hoping to, I called AAA and they delivered to my door a flatbed tow truck driver who could have come from Central Casting if you requested a "sturdy, friendly young man who could star in a production of Oklahoma!" As it was, he held the door of his truck cab open for me, and we happily regaled each other with political discussion on the two block drive to the mechanic, who, since they were attached to a Shell station, I knew would be ass-raping me on the prices, but they were the only ones open. When we arrived, I unthinkingly hopped down from the cab to see driver Jaime standing there, arms akimbo.

"Oh, sorry," I said, and climbed back into the cab and shut the door, which he then promptly re-opened, and helped me down out of, using his hand as a stepping block. Then he manfully maneuvered the truck into place, tipped his hat and said, "No problem, little lady," and got on a horse and rode away. Not really, but that's what it felt like. Although, since it was San Francisco, he was more likely to have been starring in a revival of Brokeback Mountain, not Oklahoma!

Then Darcy and I went into the city to take Jill Parker's class, which, as it turned out, Jill Parker wasn't teaching. She was in the hospital. Then we took the BART back to Oakland, with my friend and local shit-disturber Burstein, and dropped Darcy at her Crucible classes, where she learned how to put out someone who has caught on fire ("Tip number 42: Spray them with water. Just a thought, really.").

Then we engaged in some tomfoolery of the Stuff White People Like variety; namely, we participated in a giant Oakland-wide game of tag/capture-the-flag/Red Rover. It was called Journey To The End Of The Night, although by the next day, everyone was calling it Journey To The End Of My Feet, because everyone had dislocated something or tripped on something or fallen into a rosebush or gotten blisters. As one friend pointed out, "My blisters have toes." Fortunately Darcy almost passed out from dehydration and famine before we'd gone too far, so we were spared the indignity of passing out, or being chased in front of a car, or tiptoeing through someone's backyard.

Instead, we ate Chinese food, and watched people flee by our window, to the consternation of uninvolved passers-by. Turns out, the truck was basically uninjured; except for needing new tires, which was an aforementioned ass-rape, it was completely driveable, so I picked it up (with Burstein), and then we completely left it in the wrong part of town during JTTEOTN and had to walk back it dragging poor gimpy Darcy, who hurt her leg, and in the company of some guy Burstein knew from Noisebridge. We looked drunk, but were actually just deeply, deeply amused, which probably amounts to the same thing. Then we went to Dorkbot's 7th anniversary party, where I realized just how jaded I am, when Darcy asked what a Tesla coil was, and I said, "They shoot like 50,000 volts of electricity and make lightning. But these probably won't be as cool as the ones I saw at Flipside, which actually played music and the Doctor Who theme song." When Tesla coils are boring, you've been going to Burning Man too long. Ditto snail shaped art car that shoots fire from antennae.

Sunday, we gave our souls to Five and Diamond in the Mission, and I realized why all SF belly dancers look the same: because Five and Diamond's stuff is really fracking cool. I escaped only having spent several hundred dollars. Then on Monday, I drove home, where I was instantly assaulted by having Lots Of Things To Do. And also with Being Poor.

The moral of the story is: do good deeds, and God will reward you by making sure you don't die when you drive off the side of the road, and you get to talk on your cellphone the entire drive home without a headset and not get caught by the very same CHP officers who were nice enough to let you sit in their (collective) patrol cars.