Having not much to do is a wonderful thing. This whole trip has been pretty tough. Long days, waking up early (which I do anyway), pretty strenuous stuff. It takes its toll, so it’s nice to have nothing to do sometimes.

And for me Berkeley is almost that.

But around 1pm, Cole, the mysterious heroine of this post, calls and I ride over to near Shattuck Street and park the scooter next to a 2005 Bajaj Chetak. I think motorcycle/scooter parking might be free in this town. Hard to say.

We head to Herbivore for a bite to eat. A guy who looks a bit too much like Prince takes our order and I get this amazing wrap thing.

It was pretty delicious.

I wanted to check out some record stores, so that was next on the agenda. I got the new Elvis Costello album, a David Gilmour/David Bowie 10″ of them covering a couple Pink Floyd songs and a TV Personalities remix 12″. The Elvis Costello album came with a little card that sends you to a website so you can download mp3s of the music. The whole album, actually.

Listening to it now. It’s called Momofuku. Not bad at all! It’s a good purchase. I think I’d definitely buy more music if it were on vinyl AND you get free downloads. Woo!

I can’t listen to the other stuff because Cole and Josh don’t have a turntable right now, but I’ll just ship them back with the rest of my stuff.

Outside the record shop, I discovered a new level of bike locking security. Duct tape. It was amazing. If I were a bike thief, I wouldn’t mess with this simply out of respect. It’s brilliant. Check it out.

All of this was taking a lot of time, but that’s great. The weather was good and the time flew by.

That Cole girl wanted to head to the farmers market and so we did. Lovely. Wonderful place. Lots of fresh organic stuff. They even have apple cider out here! Weird!

While we were getting some bread, a little kid of maybe seven years asks the guy for a muffin. The guy gives the kid the muffin and replaces that muffin in the display stand with another. He then said, “Like magic!”

The little kid sort of freaks out and says “No it’s NOT!” The kid’s mother (who was carrying a canvas bag with The Nation logo on it) then had to explain that he didn’t mean it that it was really magic.

I would pay this mother ten whole dollars to hear her explanation of why her kid freaked out at the mention of magic. Just what is she doing to her children? Strange folk round these here parts.

On the way back to get my bike, I came across two instances of poetry. The first was the Poem Store. The Poem Store is simply a guy with a typewriter who, upon giving him a certain amount of money, would write you your very own poem. I didn’t have much money, so I skipped this feature. However, what a fun job. I think I want to do this.

The next instance of poetry came from an older fellow named Mathew H. Lares. He was selling a few poems for $2. I decided that since I had only two dollars, he would get it. I bought them and do not regret the purchase. Not my style really, but good writing and a good cause. There should be more poets hawking their stuff on the street. Again, I want to do this.

Oh so then, I ride back to Cole and Josh’s only to discover that I brought the wrong house key with me. I can’t get in their apartment. So I ride to where Cole is nannying to get her key. But she gave her key to Josh because he gave his key to me. So there I sat, locked out.

I decided now would be a good time to get a start on changing the headlamp. My scooter keys and my tools are all outside. So I did that and such things were fine. I still have to finish it though.

We ended the evening by watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, Beast of Yucca Flats.

Good day? Sure was. I slept well!

Miles: 7
Total miles: 4983