Just a Dream

Boy, this was crazy.
Okay, this is not bicycle related in anyway.
Well, I guess I could make something up, but then it wouldn't be real.
Not that it was real in the first place.
The not real thing was a dream I had last night.
So vivid, so realistic, so, so strange.
As far as dreams go.
Actually, they're all pretty strange, so let's just say this one was way strange.
So anyways, I was like all dressed up in clothes from the the 1930's.
In the beginning part at least.
Seems I was the head of some sort of Bonnie and Clyde like band of robbers and we had just knocked over some financial institution somewhere in Kaimuki.
Kaimuki is an area over in Honolulu, sort of near the University of Hawaii, this will be important later.
So anyways, we had just robbed this place, or maybe we had just blasted our way in cause okay, here's the PG-13 part, there were a couple of dead folks there on the floor.
I didn't shoot em, maybe one of my unidentifiable cohorts did cause there were like two guys on the ground and they weren't moving.
So anyways, someone got the loot, but we weren't done.
Oh no, not by a long shot.
See, I wanted to ransack the place, it was made up of eight or so offices, the kind with glass walls and doors with wooden frames.
So I'm a rifling through all the desks and opening strong boxes and filling my pockets with cash and antique jewelry.
Which was pretty cool, since all the jewelry was sort of Art Nouveau, or Art Deco like.
I'm talking like humungasoid diamond rings in these crazy elaborate settings.
Oh yeah.
So far, pretty standard dream stuff, if you dream a Jim Thompson dream.
Okay, so we got all our swag and here's where it gets really funky like.
The gang is dressed up in like pinstripes and short fat ties and fedoras, but the getaway car is like my old '84 Oldsmobile!



Okay, that's not my Oldsmobile, but it looked just like that.
Except mine still had the hubcaps.
I don't know why or how my Oldsmobile popped in there.
I mean it's a dream, you'd think I could do better than my beat up Oldsmobile!
It doesn't really matter cause we don't have that far to go.
Seems the finance company is right next door to a gas station, the old type of gas station with a service bay and an office.
Well the plan is to barbecue next door at the gas station, you so that the cops won't suspect us for knocking over the finance place.
Well, the goofiness gets better cause now I'm thinking I shouldn't have taken the two cases of beer from the finance place, cause my brother is going to be along any minute and he's going to be looking for that beer and maybe I should go to the store and get two cases to put back in the fridge so that he, my brother, won't get busted by the cops when he goes looking for the beer in the finance place, which I took.
So now I'm driving around in my Oldsmobile, looking for a mom and pop store to buy two cases of beer, which was really cheap beer, I forget which kind, I just know it was really cheap, like Hamm's or Keystone or something.
Well, forget the beer cause now I'm back in front of the finance place, sort on the side of the service station, hoping no one goes into the finance place cause there's like two dead dudes inside.
Oh no!
A yellow VW Rabbit pulls up and some guy goes in and comes back out and hangs a sign on the door!
The old boxy looking Rabbits, not the newer ones.
I forget what the sign said.
Doesn't matter for now I'm like with my brother and my father and my sister, who now has a totally different husband, and we're in the back of the service station which must now belong to my dad cause it's like full of junk, the kind of junk he tends to collect.
So I'm thinking wow! this is like a lot of junk and my sister's dream husband is holding a kid which is not my nephew and I'm on a laptop computer which has a toilet for a mouse.
No really, the mouse was shapped like a toilet, with a little button on it for a clicker thingy!
Well forget the computer, for now we are all sitting around a wooden table with old chrome steel and vinyl type chairs from the sixties and we're gathered around a small black and white television watching Univerisity of Hawaii's baseball team.
Except the reception is pretty bad so I get up and mess with the rabbit ears and it doesn't work so I have to move around to the back of the table to mess with the antennas some more and I'm thinking they better not tell me to stay there when the picture clears up and how is it that the picture is so fuzzy when the baseball stadium is like right up the street and then I think that it's probably because they're not broadcasting from the stadium but from someplace downtown and I'm still messing with the antennas and then I got up.
I gotta say, it was all very strange.
Well okay, not that strange for I admit I have stranger dreams it's just that I usually forget what they are about usually by the time I'm brushing my teeth.
I had a dream once where I was some sort of mercenary or something and I was picking out weapons like in The Matrix, but I woke up before I could use any of 'em.
Then there was the one where I was some kind of exorcist and I was chasing the devil cause he was making smoking holes in the ground.
I lost him going up the stairs of some apartment building.
The devil, I mean.
I used to get up and write them down, you know, as sort of a reference, but now they're more a source of amusement than a source of creativity.
If you know what I mean.
Anyways, thankfully it was all just a dream.
Except for the money and jewels part.
I sort of wish that part was real.

The Header

This shouldn't be that hard.
I mean I do it mostly every month.
Not exactly like clockwork, more like calendar work.
If you know what I mean.
So it was time to change the header pic.
It shouldn't be that hard, but it sort of is.
I mean first you gotta go out and actually take picture.
That's the easy part for I tend to take lots o'pictures.
Not all of them suitable for publication; The Flat Tire after all has standards.
Sort of.
Usually, I like to do something that has to do with a different view, the blog is in one point perspective don't you know.
My own goofy perspective.
So out of all the pictures I take, it should be easy to pick one out and stick up on top.
Well, first you gotta crop it, then size it, mess with the contrast a bit or the color, then see if Blogger doesn't mess it up when you post it up.
I'm no expert, so it usually takes me three or four tries in order to get it right.
Check in at the end of the month and you may witness all sorts of goofiness appear behind the title.
I change it out for I figure if you, the reader, visit a lot, and I hope you visit like as much as you can, in fact make this your homepage, anyways, I figure you get tired of seeing the same thing over and over every time you pop in.
Variety and all that.
I gotta say, sometimes it takes me like hours and hours to get it just right.
Okay, not really.
It does take me some time though.
Well tonight, I was about change the marquee, when I looked at the present picture and I just couldn't change it.
I had this nice image of the boat ramp all ready to go, but I just could not take the old picture down.
It's not a particularly good image, the old one, I mean I didn't have the title in mind when I took it.
I had to crop it a bunch in order to get the composition close to where it looked okay.
The thing is, despite the flaws, I like it.
Not the just the picture, but everything in it.
For one thing, it reminds me of that epic journey I took around Pearl Harbor.
It reminds me of the Hawaiian Monk seals I saw that day, a chance sighting that only happened because I ride a bicycle.
Of course there's the bicycle, the Celeste Devil and all that alloy Italian goodness.
Then there's the ocean.
I've spent a lot of time around the ocean.
Not so much so nowadays, but in all my other lives, it was always there.
I'm not a waterman by any means, one of those who spend their lives around the water, learning the nuances of wind and wave and tide, but I do think of myself as being close to it.
The ocean I mean.
I know enough to enjoy it's beauty and I know enough to know the dangers.
The ocean giveth and the ocean taketh.
Or something like that.
Anyways, that image, the one up on top, gives me a warm fuzzy when I look at it.
It's sort of lonely looking in a way.
I mean the water is nice and the sun is shining and all, but still, there's an emptiness about it that I can't quite figure out.
I think it's because when I look at it, I feel like it's where I'm supposed to be.
I'm supposed to be standing behind my bicycle, there at the beach, not sitting down on the couch typing this out.
I'm supposed to be there, all a huffing and a puffing, letting the ocean breeze cool me down, smelling the salt in the air, listening to the waves break against the white sand.
Worrying about whether or not my frame is going to rust.
Okay, I don't worry about that.
Too much.
The fact that I was there, a huffing and a puffing, taking it all in during that one moment, makes it all the more poignant.
I'd like to go back.
That image shouldn't mean so much to me, I mean I live ten minutes by bicycle away from my own beach, my own ocean breeze and my own little waves lapping against the shore.
I ride by it all the time.
Maybe that's the problem.
I just ride on by.
I should go and let the cool water surround my burning massive thighs.
Get my head wet and blow some bubbles.
Sit on a rock and let the sun dry me off until all that's left are little crystals of salt to brush from my skin.
Let that sun warm me until it's time to jump back in and start the routine again.
Again and again, until the afternoon shadows get long and the sun can longer work it's magic.
Then it would be time to get back on my bicycle and huff and puff my way back home.
My bicycle.
As much a part of my life now as the ocean was back when.
Does the image represent my present visiting my past?
Should I see harmony or conflict?
Maybe I should just see a bicycle at the beach.
Do I think of all those things when I look at that picture?
Perhaps.
All I know is that it's not quite time to take it down.
Maybe next month.