Focused on Different Things

Dropped off at MacArthur station. My BART card is still working and so is the escalator.  I decide that one side is the right side.  And the next train to San Francisco isn’t coming for another seventeen minutes.  Really?  Seems like an awfully long time.  Maybe I should just get myself a Lyft and head on over that way.  It’s only then that I recognize an approaching San Francisco Airport train only four minutes away on the other side of the tracks.  The police presence feels strong up here on the elevated line.  Muscular women and men in police uniforms walk determinately along the tracks. 

Now, a Lyft speeding along towards the corner of Green and Hyde.  I arrive.  Consider a laundry. Get an updated locational meeting and now I know where I’m going.  My old friend meets me out on the street and soon I’ve my espresso there at the table beside him in the same café I’d met him in last time.  But that time he was focused on different things.  

After an hour or so he leaves, and I have an hour to kill before two other old friends come to meet me.  I vacate the big booth we’d had as the place is getting crowded and shift over to the more modest one-seater by the window where I can plug in and consider the gay male bicyclist couple sipping and flirting outside, presumably recharging after a long pedal.

I get another text.  The lunch meeting suggests a nearby place:  Leopolds.  Upon entering it becomes clear that this is a decidedly Teutonic, mountain lodge vibe.  The waitress is dressed like a “St. Pauli” girl, and the gent who shows me where to park my suitcase is sporting lederhosen.  I consider hunting in Bavaria in accordance with the wall decorations and order a beer, of course, waiting for my chums.  

Saturday 8/24/19