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Mar. 29th, 2024 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrottieOne of the ways that New York reminds me of Texas is people overwhelmingly make great effort to keep their dogs away from people. People will be walking the cutest little lab mix puppy that obviously adores everyone and wants to say hi to everyone and they'll reel that poor little thing like until it is half way hoovering off the ground the moment they see someone, then pull it off the sidewalk at 50 paces away. I know people take dogs with them for protection and people train dogs for this and that is a dimension here. I think the only time a New Yorker has really apologized to me is when I was walking along and a hit a corner with overgrown shrubs and ran in to adorable puppy a couple was walking from the other direction. We had a whole slobber fest full of tummy rubs and face licks before they even realize what happened... then they apologized to me. And I'm sitting there on the ground soaking up their dog's spit while they profusely apologize. New York is no where near Canada all in all and the exception doesn't prove the rule.
So, conversely, one of the most wonderful things about the California Bay Area is people will show up places and their dog just gets elevated to human levels of liberty, running around, making friends, seeing what people are up to, begging snacks, getting pets, getting strangers to throw the ball, whatevs. Almost every time I go to CSC, I make a new dog friend. I've also made cat friends there. Hell, the squirrels are friendly. Somewhere I have a pic someone else took of a rat that crawled in my hung motorcycle helmet and took a nap. And out here in the sticks, there's a friendly tom with a collar who soaks up the pets and hangs out in the community room like he owns the place. I haven't tamed the coyotes yet.
Mitsu is still kicking. He's pushing 80 and still windsurfs every day as far as anyone can tell. I don't know what the story is and I'm afraid to ask, but my imagination says he was a champion windsurfer who immigrated to the US when he was in his 20s for the windsurfing scene then just never fucking stopped. He always recognizes me and asks me about stuff. Today, he asked me about the tallbike, which I confirmed I still have and is indeed in NY as he suspected, but not NYC, just NY state. He asked me how I come between New York and California; I told him Amtrak and he approved of that. He said he used to ride Greyhound a lot and I said I did too. As far as we know, he's been in the states for at least 40 years, but he still has a thick Japanese accent and my audio processing isn't great to start with. He was telling me about a few years ago no longer volunteering for a center, whose name I think was in Japanese, that helped new Japanese immigrants get their footing in San Francisco, on the other side of the bay, but that closed down because of the Internet, and the Internet helping Japanese immigrates. He hadn't been there in a while. He said ten years ago, his car broke down and he didn't have it fixed. I didn't know Mitsu had a car. He's a gardener specializing in climbing trees and he's still doing that. He feel out of a tree a few years back and was injured for a while, which somehow resulted in him running around in his boxers in inclimate weather a lot. I haven't been hanging out at the club late in to the night recently, but in the past, I've looked at the time well after most things have wound down and people left, and after dishes were done and all of the blunts smoked, and it's 11pm, and thought oh, I should go, then right then, Mitsu comes crawling out of the bay with his windsurf rig like Swamp Thing. He says he always knows how to find the wind, but he can't windsurf to San Francisco because the winds change, and you can't make sail changes on a windsurf board like you can a sailboat. He seems to realize that he's winding down a bit and can't easily go all of the places he used to. But he's still windsurfing. I don't think it's the still the case, but for decades, he sat in the tiny clubhouse and sewed windsurf sails in to the night. And if you windsurf, he'll talk your ear off about boards and sails and technique and the wind. The unofficial club motto is "windy, windy", from Mitsu's, "oh, windy windy!".
Edit: I'm probably going to forget to take my final exam.
So, conversely, one of the most wonderful things about the California Bay Area is people will show up places and their dog just gets elevated to human levels of liberty, running around, making friends, seeing what people are up to, begging snacks, getting pets, getting strangers to throw the ball, whatevs. Almost every time I go to CSC, I make a new dog friend. I've also made cat friends there. Hell, the squirrels are friendly. Somewhere I have a pic someone else took of a rat that crawled in my hung motorcycle helmet and took a nap. And out here in the sticks, there's a friendly tom with a collar who soaks up the pets and hangs out in the community room like he owns the place. I haven't tamed the coyotes yet.
Mitsu is still kicking. He's pushing 80 and still windsurfs every day as far as anyone can tell. I don't know what the story is and I'm afraid to ask, but my imagination says he was a champion windsurfer who immigrated to the US when he was in his 20s for the windsurfing scene then just never fucking stopped. He always recognizes me and asks me about stuff. Today, he asked me about the tallbike, which I confirmed I still have and is indeed in NY as he suspected, but not NYC, just NY state. He asked me how I come between New York and California; I told him Amtrak and he approved of that. He said he used to ride Greyhound a lot and I said I did too. As far as we know, he's been in the states for at least 40 years, but he still has a thick Japanese accent and my audio processing isn't great to start with. He was telling me about a few years ago no longer volunteering for a center, whose name I think was in Japanese, that helped new Japanese immigrants get their footing in San Francisco, on the other side of the bay, but that closed down because of the Internet, and the Internet helping Japanese immigrates. He hadn't been there in a while. He said ten years ago, his car broke down and he didn't have it fixed. I didn't know Mitsu had a car. He's a gardener specializing in climbing trees and he's still doing that. He feel out of a tree a few years back and was injured for a while, which somehow resulted in him running around in his boxers in inclimate weather a lot. I haven't been hanging out at the club late in to the night recently, but in the past, I've looked at the time well after most things have wound down and people left, and after dishes were done and all of the blunts smoked, and it's 11pm, and thought oh, I should go, then right then, Mitsu comes crawling out of the bay with his windsurf rig like Swamp Thing. He says he always knows how to find the wind, but he can't windsurf to San Francisco because the winds change, and you can't make sail changes on a windsurf board like you can a sailboat. He seems to realize that he's winding down a bit and can't easily go all of the places he used to. But he's still windsurfing. I don't think it's the still the case, but for decades, he sat in the tiny clubhouse and sewed windsurf sails in to the night. And if you windsurf, he'll talk your ear off about boards and sails and technique and the wind. The unofficial club motto is "windy, windy", from Mitsu's, "oh, windy windy!".
Edit: I'm probably going to forget to take my final exam.
