San Francisco - As I'm walking at the southern end of Powell St I'm lost in my own thoughts, coffee in hand, thinking how much it looks like Melbourne Australia with it's four and five story masonry buildings and rows of trees lining the sidewalk. All and all it's a mellow, cool, fog filled morning. I have my jacket zipped up and pull my ball cap on as I motor towards the office. But my tranquility is broken as I turn the corner on Market St. It's like someone flipped on the freak switch! A black homeless man with a knit cap and overcoat is bellowing a rant for the whole world to hear. It echoes off the canyon of buildings and jolts me from my morning quiet. I duck down a side street to break the cacophony and I'm knocked back by a welders spark, blinding, shocking. Whoa. I turn around and head back to Third St. BANG, an ambulance plows into a little red sports car. A 50-ish professional gets out of his little car and a pony tailed old hippie gets out of the ambulance to hash it out. I back into the recessed doorway of an establishment called Eddie Rickenbackers to watch the scene unfold. As they point and look and shake their heads I turn and peer into Eddie Rickenbackers and scan left to right. I see a bar/restaurant with classic and vintage motorcycles hanging from the ceiling....and "what the F" my heart jumps again at the sight of a fat old man splayed out in a wheelchair on an oxygen tank! That scared the hell out of me! A live human being hooked up to life support at 7:00 AM in a bar. Yikes! Who was this guy? What the hell is he doing there? Was he in trouble? Was he the owner. Was he the night maintenance man who overworked himself? ...and at the same time I'm wondering to myself why would anybody in their right mind sit under a 2000lb motorcycle for dinner in an earthquake zone! Then I think maybe I should send the hippy ambulance driver to Eddie Rickenbackers to help the guy on oxygen! All these thoughts come at once. In real time I recoil, quickly. Very quickly. What the hell was that about? I better get off the streets and into the office. I hope the workday doesn't repeat the street theater I'm involved with this morning...although my Lead Programmer just called and said he won't be in for a planned 10:00AM conference call. I wonder, is it a full moon or something?
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
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