Dinner, Complete with Two Shannons

Many things have happened since my last substantive update, but before we get into all that, first you’ll want to know this about Hammett: Sometimes he likes to topple the brown paper grocery bag I use for recycling in the living room and claw his way into it, kicking debris out behind him as he goes.

I have now and then found him after such an operation lying atop the pile of paper with a spent but pleased air; one on such occasion, one of his long skinny legs was still thrust through a toilet paper tube when he was apprehended, leading to a moment of bafflement on his part when he tried to stroll off.

“Did you ever hear of a cat doing something like that?” I asked my mother.

“No, that sounds more like a dog,” she agreed.

Back there in March, in front of MOMA I gave $20 to a panhandler with giant expressive eyes—I had just gotten a raise and felt I could share—and she walked with me all the way to Market St. and told me about being in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Before we parted, she darted in and gave me a quick kiss on the neck.

I had some work done on my brakes at Freewheel and asked the fellow there (I still miss Dan!) to make sure they were tight, but not so tight I wouldn’t be able to get them undone. I don’t know what you call the kind of brakes I have, but whatever they are, it’s always extremely difficult for me to unfasten them (which you need to do when fixing a flat tire, for instance).

I didn’t want to wait until I had a flat tire at night in the rain before finding out I couldn’t undo the brakes, so I checked when I got home, and sure enough, I couldn’t do it. After struggling for a bit and getting more and more frustrated, I called Tom and told him I needed help.

I’m glad to report that he couldn’t do it either, which was soothing to my nerves. He told me that if it came right down to it, I could undo the brakes completely when I needed to fix a flat; it turned out I already had the right hex wrench in my bike bag. He showed me how, and how to adjust the brakes in general.

Thanks to Tom, for the first time in the four years since I got the Marin, I’m entirely free of worry about its brakes.

In late March, my old friend Frank Manahan came to town from Dublin, Ireland, with his girlfriend. We had dinner in North Beach along with a heterosexual married couple who live here in San Francisco, BOTH of whom are named Shannon and BOTH of whom are tax attorneys. That is to say, they both have the exact same name: Shannon Drexler, or whatever their last name is, which I’ve forgotten, but wouldn’t have used here, anyway. Lochlainn, Frank’s close friend and an ex-coworker of mine, was there, too.

Shortly thereafter, another old friend, Elea, visited from Poulsbo, WA, with her charming young son Jack, who immediately stuck his hand into the open window of my cab, ready for a polite handshake. We walked around Chinatown and had lunch there, and then spent the afternoon at the zoo.

At the end of March, about a year and a half into my project at work to install secure bicycle parking company wide, we finally identified the first site, in Salt Lake City, that will install racks! We’re gathering quotes now.