Joe Biden is on TV right now, stumping for Kamala. There is a hope that hasn’t been felt in a while. We voted for Joe in 2020, there was no other way we could vote. The other guy was just an idiot and Bill and I being from the tri-state area, we’ve known what a turd he was since the 80s.

I came close to meeting Joe in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy messed up the PATH train lines. I got a fist bump and a couple of snapshots which you won’t see here since either WordPress won’t allow it anymore or I just don’t know how to do it anymore. Perhaps I will try.

We usually watch the news at 6PM but Kamala Harris is now speaking so we are watching the news, not just the reporting of news. History I reckon. A wonderful distraction.

And now back to writing.

Today is Labor day. And out of the past 3 days, today has been the best day weatherwise. No apprehension about riding today. I was definitely into it. A slight variation on the trip, different streets. The weather was so nice that there were more pedestrians out and about, walking their dogs and not paying much attention to anything.

I used the buzzer on my handlebars a few times and had to use the whistle when the buzzer was going unheard. As I have written before, I sound the alarm about 30-40 feet away. Most people pick up on that and all they need to do is take a side step for a few seconds and then I am gone.

Today I sounded all the alarms as I saw 2 women walking and talking alongside a very busy thoroughfare. Finally, I had to break out the whistle which startled them, and as I passed one of them had her heart on her chest, and said ‘Whoa’. I looked at her as I rolled by and said ‘Yes, whoa’. I didn’t stop, didn’t turn around, just kept on keepin’ on.

I was feeling good since it was right after seeing my old pal, Julio, and his 10-year-old son, Christian. Julio’s older son Alex, looks like Julio and Christian looks like his mother, Stine. That is quite a gene pool what with both parents exceedingly good looking. Julio would be the first to admit that.

Bill came home a little bit after I did. This gig he’s had for the past couple of months has finished. It was a good gig and the ending of it, probably added to his depression and stress. I can’t blame him.

I try to help steady the course, telling him to ‘Be Here Now’ and I try to maintain that myself but it sure is not an easy thing to do with the monkey mind I seem to have. Part of me is itching to write about my feelings for the oncoming week but that would not involve ‘Be Here Now’ would it?

I would be anxious about something that may or may not happen and I’m feeling too good for that.

Daytime writing. Something I don’t do often if at all. I generally write at night but here I am in the gray skied day, in front of my desktop computer screen doing just that. Another day that started out apprehensive with regards to bike riding. Once again I said to myself, ‘Just go do it. If it rains it rains.’

Whereas yesterday I went bike riding while Bill slept, today Bill was off to do the things he was supposed to do yesterday, and that involved going into Manhattan. When he asked me to join him I was steadfast in my refusal.

That freed him up to go to his favorite gym on the Upper West Side which would have left me on the street while he did whatever it was that he does in the gym. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s ‘Cruising Central’ in the gym which would explain that of all the gym joints in the world he’d have to go to that one.

Such was my despair that I could not bear being alone. No one to bolster my spirits or to chide me in the direction of a better mood through humorous things on TV. No, all I had was myself. And I was in the mood to languish though I decided not to. Things were getting sad.

Finances, the state of the world, September (today is the 1st), and death. I really do not like September and you would think that after 44 years I would get over September, the faux end of Summer on Labor Day weekend, the beginning of school. I guess that feeling never goes away.

At least for me, it doesn’t. Labor Day weekend growing up meant the VFW Labor Day picnic which used to be held in Saddle River County Park where I would play with the other children of alcoholic veterans drinking away their PTSD. Lots of greasy food and syrupy soda as parents sat and smoked and drank and shucked clams.

The last quarter of the picnic would usually involve a brawl, someone slapped their wife or said something that had crossed the line. A pile-up of drunken bloated bodies, women screaming ‘Stop Stop’. The 2 antagonists were separated and set to their respective picnic tables.

Then it was the car ride home, and since it was the 1970s drunk driving was tolerated somewhat as long as no one and no property was injured. I suppose most of these particular attendees to these VFW Labor Day picnic punch-ups are all dead and if they’re not, very close to being 100 years old.

Nothing like that for me these days, I had outgrown it then and now that behavior would absolutely be frowned upon. All these young veterans, younger than me who served in Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Who knows what they’re like?

Having grown up around veterans and seeing how they were then, leaves me with a general ambivalence towards the whole mandatory honor bestowed upon them no matter what they might’ve done over there.

The bike riding was OK, it was the smart thing to do. I almost called it a dismal ride. But going out and riding turned out to be a lot better than sitting at home alone. And I did get hit by a few raindrops, not enough to make me turn back. I stayed the course, of course.