Crashbox

I find it rather amazing that we can, at random, completely change our environment, surroundings, our whole world in fact, for just a few brief moments---a day or two---then go back to the same old habits and haunts that make up the familiar things of *normal* life. This last weekend we rode over 1000 miles on motorcycles, toured HWY 1, cruised through San Francisco, relaxed in [MY] park on a hill that looked every direction at once, and watched the sunrise from the Golden Gate. Not to mention the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival or drinking and singing at M. M.'s wonderful house. For a fleeting weekend we were nomads on two wheels, poking around the famous and historic Bay Area, breathing in the people and the sights of a place we will never live. At one point during the music festival a girl with tears streaming down her face asked me for a cigarette; (her lady lover had left her alone in the crowd, to cry over Gillian Welch it would seem); while I lit her a smoke she asked me if I would marry G. Welch, and I said perhaps I would if I didn't already have a wife; (I was trying to be sympathetic). "I would," she choked out, "I WOULD!" Later on, the announcer unabashedly stated that we couldn't smoke cigarettes, but if we wanted to smoke *other things* we were to keep in mind the comfort of others. Nice. I was certain I would be second-hand-high by the the time we left, but maybe the music was too good and I didn't notice. And was it ever good. Doc Watson and Gillian Welch took my soul, as they have before, and the hipsters, freaks, folkies, lesbians, tattoos, ragged clothing, wild hair and single speed bikes all mixed together with the music to form a sort of sad dirty lovable collage. After a long night at M.'s house with lots more beer and more music, (a little clumsier than at the park, I'll admit), we headed out, 80mph down the 101 for hours into the fading evening until at last with rattled bones and sore muscles we staggered through our own door and all was back the way it had been, as if it all were merely a misty dream.