Cliffs of Power Loss

It’s a good time of the day.  Tuesday is the day to fast through till dinner.  It’s 6:53PM.  I haven’t had a nibble for twenty-three hours or so.  Three hours ago was not so pleasant, but now, the finish line is well within site.   I can smell garlic cooking in the other room.  Momentarily, it will be time to break this fast.  The first bite or two when you do, is always rather wonderful. 

Yesterday my phone evaporated its charge down to single digits on the ride over to the gym and I fretted that I’d run out of music before I got home.  The depletion of battery juice is not linear.  Even when you kill all apps except iTunes, go airplane mode, etc., as I did on the way out, there can be these cliffs of power loss that are precipitous and were they to continue at that pace would have you dead and gone in a matter of minutes.  

Today I had plenty of charge.  Doing the pelvic pulls, "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" came on and I can only imagine what I must have looked like, to the kindly middle school teacher who's often there with me in the early morning, but let’s just say I pulled and grimaced with a passion.  Leaving the gym it was starting to drizzle.  I’d suggested to client that we could talk at 7:00AM.  He called after I texted him again.  And soon he was interrupting Jimi around the time he said:  “Let’ me say one more last thing . . . “

A quick chat, a simple request, my client heard me out and soon it was pouring rain.  I parked my bike beneath a willow tree which afforded me scant coverage.  I had a hoodie on and it was now getting soaked, as were my jeans now painted on to my legs.  We held my request up to the light once and twice and he had a point and I had a point but eventually I shifted to another point which was to point out that I was standing in the rain and I’d appreciate if he could do his best to meet what I’d requested, as I needed shelter.  Gentlemanly, he was fine with that. 

I continued on in the downpour, happy actually.  Jimi came right back in as we hung up, promising to give my sweet time back to me “one of these days.”  I swung back my wet hood to confirm that there were no approaching cars, sloshed along, avoiding the puddles, thinking about the purple bike-style poncho I used to have many years ago in Shanghai, where it's wet like this all the time.   Rain isn’t so bad when you know you can get out of it.  Soon I'd be dry. 

Tuesday, 10/16/18