Third Date

We rode together pleasantly, Mr. Google and me, in the early morning.  His choice in bicycle routes and mine agreed, and since we rode along the coast from San Clemente to San Diego, we faced no reasonable options.  A hilly ride it was, undulating in that lovely weather people wrongly call “June Gloom.” We agreed on everything, as comrades where options are few.  It is where landscapes open and personal preferences become possibilities, and where many roads lead to the same place through different experience, that individuals arise and become ugly conflicts. 

The parking lot in Carlsbad.  The Daily News Café where Mr. Google and I stopped for breakfast

Torrey Pines originated in just these few acres near San Diego.  They moved outward from here by the aid of human imagination to many other places.  The biggest one is in Pasadena on Hill Avenue.  In like manner, I originated in Africa, and by the aid of imagination came to this place—paler, clothed, and thousands of years later, far from where I began and far from where my followers will go. 

At San Diego, we had many choices for the last thirty miles to El Cajon.  At first we both suggested the same familiar roads near UCSD, but then he suggested the meandering path along Mission Bay.  It sounded so refreshing that I willingly followed.








But then it became time for his long anticipated left turn onto Friars Road.  I was horrified to learn that I could not turn there because it is an overpass with no way around.  Of course I fussed and screamed; what did he expect when we’d gone five miles that I’d  have to retrace.  So I left him there and stomped off in a pout.  I climbed down the steep bank with my bike and got to Friars Road despite his stupidity.  But even here in the bushes, all alone again, I made a necessary stop and found an unexpected pleasure.

In the bush

where nature calls

it beckons more 

We met again later in the day, in a place where by coincidence our paths crossed.  I bid him a wave and polite greeting; he said nothing.  The time had come to accept that our relationship might become friendly, but not close. 

I’m at my sister’s house now  and will go home in a car.