Quote of the day:

 "Decidedly this tree will not have been the slightest use to us".

--Vladimir from Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" of the interpreted symbol of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or the Tree of Life.
 

 9:13 AM Monday, July 1

 Montclair, CA

 (Jon Pedestrian's house)

 It's over. It's finally over. June is over. Just when it seemed that the pivotal month in the pivotal year of nineteen-nine-six would never end, it finally . . . well, ends.

 Jon and I are officially off the road. The culminating event, Gay Pride Parade, the culminating day, June 30th, has come and then gone and with it our venture: On the Road Again...Tripping in Reverse; and here we sit on the other side of it left to ponder just what the hell the http-address of that cyber-bus that flattened us was.

 Let me begin by saying this about the Gay Pride Parade: the energy their was fantastic, positive, life-affirming, way beyond tolerant, all the way to embracing, of all people--strike--sentient creatures--strike--living things--strike, LIFE. The parade went on for well over 7 hours; I feel somewhat like Hunter S. Thompson covering a story for the Rolling Stone. No, not in that I'm hung-over or wacked-out (no more than usual this morning, no more than usual), but in the sense that I went to the general vicinity of the event that I was supposed to be covering, but I failed to see more than 3 floats due to the size of the crowds lining the parade route, and spent most of my time in and out of local water-holes (literal and figurative) checking out the scene.

 Here's the most interesting thing that happened to us yesterday: Heading back to Pete's around six-ish, wandering around downtown, we were going to take the F-line but bumped into some bad karma--a dude became disgusted with us because we refused to buy his transfer ticket for a buck--and so continued the organized chaos that is the sad condition of all pedestrians today, we kept walking and after several more blocks, hopped into the rabbit hole that is BART.

 Big mistake. Not because of more bad karma, at least not of a human variety, but because BART was incapable of taking us anywhere near close to even the direction or ultimate destination that we had in mind, Pete's up on the Castro. But we didn't figure this little tidbit of info out until we were already entered THE MACHINE--I'd already had a bad experience trying to get into the machine, and suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or at the very least a cop and some standers by wondering why I wasn't already up to speed on exactly what I needed to do in order to be machine validated--Jon also had on a black T-shirt that red: Damn the Machine, so I think that predisposed THE MACHINE against us from the very beginning. So we road BART to Mission and 24th, walked about 8 blocks in the wrong direction, hopped a bus heading back toward downtown, when I turned to Jon and asked a question that was more a plea: "You've got the digital camera, don't you?" He did not. We had left it at the bus stop about 10 blocks back.

 Yes, that very same digital camera that has brought our pictorial journey out here on the road all the way to you in the comfort of your own home; interesting aside: said camera is also the property of said "large business, small country" referred to in the text of our splash page.

 We informed the bus driver of our oversight and she graciously agreed to let us out immediately, which was not at a scheduled stop--rules are rules after all, you can never have too many or follow them to closely, that's what I always say, I say that; and as karma would have it, she just happened to let us off directly across from a taxi repair station; a cab was just readying to pull out when we negotiated a ride back to the bus stop. Incidentally--but not co-incidently--the only reason that a cab was present when we happened by, was because our cabby had just had a flat tire fixed--nail on the Bay Bridge. There were no other available cabs other than him, and if not for that nail--for want of a nail!--well . . . you do the math.

 Our gracious cabby spirited us back to the bus stop at breakneck speed, all the while preparing us for the worst. You see: he grew up in that neighborhood and knew that bus stop to be a place that people cruised frequently looking for "valuables"--Man, cabbies know fucking everything!--and that in all probability the camera was long gone by now.

 We pulled up to the bus stop just as a gentleman was putting the camera down after a curious examination; Jon leaped out of the cab and retrieved it (along with our bottled water) and we rode the cab on to Pete's house not wanting to risk the karmic wave of public transportation yet again, uncomfortable with the foreign (or would that be international?) role of: Pedestrian.

 More on our cab-driver: he assured us as we rode to the Castro that the gentleman who was just putting the camera down (he happened to be an African American) had just been ready to run off with it; he further hypothesized that the gentleman was cursing himself that very moment because he hadn't broken into a sprint earlier. When driving back through the Mission he shared with us that he hated that neighborhood: "Fucking Mexicans," as he gunned it through the narrow streets, yielding for absolutely no one, everyone guilty by association. Jon gave him a twenty for his fare and told him to take nine, the driver returned nine dollars instead, but hey, the loss of 2 bucks to a angry white cabby seemed a slight price to pay for our little 2-footed jaunt. At a safe distance from the cab, Jon has informs me that the gentleman who curiously examined and then replaced the camera where he had discovered it is a student and was not an African-American, after all . He is an African with aspirations of becoming a citizen of the United States of America. Good luck, my friend.

I have many mixed emotions now that our journey is ended. It wasn't all that I thought it would be and it was much more than I could've imagined. You'll forgive me if I don't spend a great of time here debriefing myself as I will be spending much of the next few months processing the old and the new. So let me just end by saying that I've enjoyed being your guide these last few weeks and that I hope that you enjoyed as much as I did. Please continue to tune into our page as it continues to grow.

 Hoping that all your adventures are karma cool!

 Mac Pilsner