A Mad Biker's Ongoing Tale

Friday, October 26, 2001

I've completed my hostel stay in San Francisco. In fact, I've completed my stay in San Francisco, the fabled City by the Bay, period. Or maybe I'd be better off using an ellipsis, which mean I've completed my stay in San Francisco at least for the moment. I tried... Lord knows I tried. But I've left The City to return to the mountains, and now that I'm here I can't imagine what I'd been thinking. Good God, what had gotten into me? Gee, it's good to be back home again.

I asked my cousin, a native and remorseful reseeded Californian expatriot, now that I've left the urban strains of SF for the sub-artic hinterlands if I could return to calling San Francisco by the ever-more convient tagname "Frisco." "No!" she stated emphataically. I tired to reason with her but she wouldn't budge an inch. There's just no pleasing some people. You 'Friscans can sure be a surly bunch. (And she's never even lived in The City. Go figure.)

I started this piece by memoralizing my hostel stay. And that is what I mean the gist of the following to be..... so without further ado: If ya'll are going to stay in 'Fris...... er, The City at inexpensive but classy digs, you'll want to go hostel route. I stayed one night in Hosteling International's (HI.... "hi". Geeze. Clever, no?) Union Square Hostel in addition to spending a week ushering myself back and forth while my Polish Queen reside therein, and I can tell you that the clerks there are a surly bunch. (My agile mind is beginning to detect a pattern here.) You couldn't bribe them to part with a sincere smile for all the lobster on the Wharf. And I'm not talking about the cold, stiff kind they try to get rid of at the end of the day, neither. I mean the good stuff.

Now the Fisherman's Wharf hostel at Fort Mason, those were good people. Happy people. Decent People. People with personalities. People with names. You know, the best kind. Like Rita and Christina and Mac and Justa and oh, the mind reels...... Much nicer environment, too. Which goes far in explaining the aforementioned surliness of the aforementioned hostile hostelers.

Justa's a parttime DJ, Mac has a band, Rita takes long rides on her motorbike lookin' for a crazy little thing called love. Sandrine would just like to sleep later in the morning. Come to think of it, I think Justa would too. And Christina. Hey, so would I. But this is the way we gotta roll, yaknowmean? Mac also is the facility's cook and though he's damn good with the omniscent vegetable-rice-and-curry dish, I was dying for him to strut his stuff with other culinary delights. Ah well, you can't have it all.

Then there's Shawn. Manager extraordinaire, she posted an advert on the main bulletin board asking for applicants. The bait? Bay shrimp... not the miniscule tempters that whet your appetite one taste bud at a time, the kind that restaurants usually serve deep-fried and breaded 'cause there just ain't eough there to make an impression on even a bulemic, but the jumbo variety to satisfy even the heartiest of appetites. Yeah, it was minimum wage....... but every employee got their own room, gratis, as part of the package. That's a good 700 a month right there, which packes about another 6 bucks an hour (before taxes) onto the weekly tab. And they got to meet and host people from around the world. Geeze, what could be finer for a ramblin' man with a book to write in search of comfortable and inspirational digs such as myself? Binge and purge, binge and purge, all week long.

But Shawn wouldn't talk to me. And I think that was the problem. I insisted on talking to her, which I guess gave her the impression that I was a little too forward. Me? Forward? Would anyone that knows me well claim such a scandulous thing?

Huh? What's that you say? You would? Oh...........

Hey, that east coast attitude has kept me in good stay for a long, long time. It did well for me on the meaner-by-the-day streets of the cold, cold city. (Okay, so there's a very unseasonable heatwave going on down there, but I'm speaking metaphorically people. Work with me here.) But occassionally it backfires. (Though I gotta wonder how it would have done me down at the Union Square locale.) Why, one time I asked to speak to her and SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT THERE while one of her employees twisted his tongue way back around his tonsils and around his uvula and said she wasn't around. Geeze..... the only good thing that came from that exchange was I got to type the word "uvula". Hee, that was fun... think I'll do it again. Uvula. Uvula. Hee hee.

I got acquainted with a small legion (that's possible, right? A "small" legion?) of excited and excitable globetrotters. It was grand. Except for the night a wild-eyed vertically-challenged long-haired denizen of the dark came in with his three giggling girls pulling up his rear. I certainly have nothing against long-hairs, 'cause I used to be one myself 'til I embarked on this mad trek of mine. (Nine weeks of sweat-soaked ass-length headhair? No thanks.) It was more the wild-eyed thing he had going on, the unshakeable feeling that this was a man who lived under constant siege in his own little mind, popping his middle at the world everytime he could stop for a moment and catch his breath.

Early the next morning after he arrived I had to rise at 3:30 to ready myself for my airport shuttle run, working for wages and turning the pages. Even kings have to get down in the dust sometimes, ya know? That's often what makes for a good regent. But I digress. My new bunkie had come in with his foreign honeys a few hours earlier and hung his leather vest over the same bedhook that held my bola tie. I fumbled for the tie in the dark and the next thing I know Big Little Man hops up on his knees and cries (my apologies to the more sensitive eyes in the crowd, but I'm just quoting here) "WHAT THE HELL YOU DOING MOTHERFUCKER?" and cold-cocked me on the head.

Well, not "cold"-cocked exactly. It was more tepid, lukewarm. A bitch-slap really. It woulda been funny except for the fact that this dimunitive-in-body-and-spirit punk just assaulted me. I shone my flashlight in his eyes, its luminescence poised upon him like a vengeful er...... wraith (don't mess with me, man! Grrrrr.). Then I pointed out my tie to him, hanging innocently on its hook, a mislayed chip on his late-night shoulder, and demanded his apology. God, did I want to just drop him then and there.

He did manage an apology, I informed management of what had just transpired, and the late-night clerk took it from there, interviewing us both. Very gutsy and admirable for a gal that was smaller than my assailant. She rocks, let me tell you. Our little friend went on about how he had asked me to stop before he ended up taking more drastic action. Uh-huh. Which caused me to almost lay him out there by the front desk, so he could have enjoyed a stellar view of the remarkably clean hostel ceiling. That probably wasn't the pc way for me to make the right impression on the nightclerk, huh? Told you I shoulda rocked him back to sleep when he was still kneeling in his undies.

The next night when he and his entourage strolled back into the hostel I put my arm on his shoulder and greeted him merrily. He launched into a long explanation about this dream he had had that involved him behind the wheel of his van, stopped at a 'Frisco red light (Yeah, I know. So sue me already) where "a black man" came up to him and asked for an envelope. And while our hero labored happily to respond, the envelope-seeking streetwalker stuck his hand in the van's open window and reached for the dashboard. That's where I came in. In his dream our hero went for his knife then woke up to slap the bitch out of me. I mean, PLLLLEEEASE! Talk to my stiff and steady flashlight, mister man.

Whatevaaaaaaaah. None of the other bunkies in our room took kindly to him and his harem either. They came in late and giggled themselves to sleep, then woke early to shout and giggle some more. He wasn't missed. He claimed to have started his own tour business just this past summer and that this was one of his inagural runs. He said he was making a fortune. Now if he only could shake the portrait he painted of a down-and-out loser playing faux Svengali to a gaggle of easily-influenced skirts, he'd have his own sitcom. No, wait. He already HAS his own sitcom. He also said he awoke that fateful night, open palm at the ready, to defend "Dave's" stuff. Too bad he couldn't remember that when I introduced myself to him the night before I had told him that my name was "Mark." I only go by "Dave" when I'm in Missouri.

Well. I'm gonna go. Don't wanna be accused of rambling again. Then again, that might make for one of those good prototypical county-type songs. You know, the kind they play with a fiddle in the band. And maybe a wailing harmonica. Maybe I can can get Mac the cook the play it for me. See ya later, sports fans.

posted by mark 8:05 AM

The life and times of my big road excursion, pedaling 3435 miles from the Jersey Coast to San Francisco. And all points thereafter.

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