It’s a sunny Sunday in San Francisco and I’ve had a lovely day running around the Mission District with Rose who was in town visiting friends for the weekend, and her friends Naz and Jen who are in town because they live here having moved from Chicago less than a year ago. Coincidentally, Naz designed the Gaper’s Block t-shirt that I wore today (the black shirt with the four red stars). We had lunch at La Taqueria – the burritos here are the size of egg rolls. They’re fairly tasty but you could fit four of them into a Chicago burrito. Mitchell’s Ice Cream was pretty high quality as well, and Anthony’s Cookies is open for business and he’s selling them as fast as he can make them.

I am now outside the Shut Up and Write! writing on the patio but it’s cold and I’ve got a lot to get done by tomorrow so I’ll probably head out soon. I have of course not made as much progress into Ulysses as I had intended. I think this is what happened the first time, I put the book down to do some work and never picked it up again.

All in all it’s been an uneventful week. Nothing peculiar has happened, nothing funny, I haven’t randomly encountered any wonderful interesting people. It’s like that I think – it’s like that in movies. A person is enshrouded in magical sparkles and they sort of fly off into the atmosphere and burn out and then you’re just left there without any magic.

I’ll be back in Chicago in a week and probably fairly busy for the next month or so. It’ll be good to get back into the old routine of work/exercise/sleep/repeat. I’ll try and track down a motorcyle by spring and learn to ride, then head north to Minnesota on it and tool about town with the Wirtzfelds.

Today I contacted a person on Craigslist about purchasing their moped from them with the intention of driving this moped halfway across the country back home. The moped in question is a Vespa Ciao. The owner was going to be at Samovar on Page and Laguna which was on the way back to where I’m staying so I figured I’d stop and see if it was the right vehicle to get me home.

It is not in fact impossible to get across country on an underpowered moped. For reference I will direct you to Brian of moped army who is as we speak wending his way across country on a Puch Newport II: moped army. Perhaps not the greatest of examples since he hasn’t actually successfully crossed the country yet but someone is making the attempt.

Arriving early I found the tea both overpriced and worth the price – for the price of $9 + tip I received a glass pot full of lukewarm green tea that was delicious and smooth. The waitress was wearing a t-shirt with the person I was meeting’s name on it (“TYNAN” – with the “A” having a star as the hole). For reference, visit tynan.net. She apparently is good friends with Tynan.

“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” she said. “He lives in an RV.”

“How does he store his mopeds?”

“His bikes? He just locks them up on the street.”

Tynan arrived and was every bit what his website makes him seem like, a very well adjusted person living in an RV and having apparently a wonderful time of it. The Ciao was small, and I on the Ciao was monkey on a tricycle big. Pointing the bike uphill I slowly eased into the throttle, expecting a sudden jolt of movement as the engine propelled me forward. At the point the handle stopped turning I was still not moving.

“You should start from level ground,” Tynan said. So I pushed the Ciao up the six feet to level ground and was in fact moving. As I drove across the flat intersection towards the westward hill a San Francisco police patrol car pulled up. I continued along and the effect was much the same as rolling a ball up a hill, even heading into it full throttle. The police car pulled aside me.

“Pedal!” one of the cops yelled. “Pedal!”

They drove off uphill laughing as I put my foot down and turned the bike around. And so, my 50cc dream of freedom has come to a slow, underpowered halt.

I am going to read Ulysses. The particulars are still to be worked out – I’m trying to get my travel pack slimmed down and in paper form Ulysses would be a clear step in the wrong direction. It feels like a divine reminder – I have always considered myself the Ulysses type (Homeric not Joycean) – not cowardly but not hot for battle, too clever by half, a homebody set awander by the gods.

This morning I woke up and needed to be in on a web meeting which, given that the main participants are in San Francisco, I could’ve attended in person, but I hadn’t mentioned I was going to be in town again so I took this shambles of a bike that I bought off of Craigslist and rode down to the Mission District.

After the meeting I went to Receiver to adjust the brakes on the bike which are of the ‘v-brake’ variety – rather than the familiar wishbone shape of old, they’re like antennae attached on the fork below the rim each itself. After about an hour I figured out that they were in fact unadjustable – there were deep gouges in the plastic that allowed the springs to slip and made them unadjustable. I obtained a new set of brakes at Valencia Cycle for $30, which brings this fiasco up to $95 and climbing. The back, it seems, is beyond repair. The rear for flexes outwards when I’m seated and inwards when I’m not – any adjustment made won’t work for the other state. So I’ll either be able to brake when not seated but not while seated, or brake when seated but not be able to walk the bike uphill when not seated.

At this point, for no discernible reason, I started biking back towards Inner Richmond where I’m staying. I say no discernible reason because I should’ve stayed in the Mission District and parked myself at Ritual or the Marsh and gotten some work done. I also should’ve taken Castro instead of Noe, but I took Noe on this rickety bike which, just outside of Jumpin’ Java, wore out my legs completely.

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So I returned to the Green Apple where the night before I’d seen a multi-tool with a pliers I could use to loosen the rear brakes so they wouldn’t be adding a constant drag on my progress. In the used book section I was checking for any unfamiliar Umberto Eco essay collections when I came across “The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce”.  And around the corner there, it could’ve been the same book that I had abandoned to the library in 2001, the black cover with the extended U flowing into darkness off the cover.

And then yes, it is time to finish reading Ulysses, and get a guitar and busker on the street, and smoke and drink whiskey and ride a motorcycle without a license across half the country