Another day of bike riding and another good day for it. Once again I started a little bit earlier than usual, about a half hour early. My Sunday morning routine is as follows: I wake up by 9 AM and paddle through the apartment, turning on Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley. I started watching that show in 2019.

Bill and I were in Easton PA for a friend’s party. The friend is a bus driver and Bill and I sat at a table with his fellow bus drivers. Bill was in his element and I was enjoying myself, finally able to put a face to the names I had heard for a number of years. We spent the night in a motel and when we woke up I put on Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley.

She’s so likeable and the stories presented were more or less very positive. Not all though, some gravitas to the sweetness is required. After Jane Pauley, it’s usually the Golden Girls. It’s a Gay thing it seems.

I had read on the social medias of drag shows where episodes of Golden Girls are performed and there’s definitely a gay mindset in the writing. And now Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer are set to be in a TV show ‘Mid-Century Modern’ which is said to be a Gay version of The Golden Girls for the 2020s on Hulu. That’s what I read.

I did mention in a post from 19 years ago, meeting Rue McClanahan on the street outside of Putnam Lovell, what was the actual name of Wanker Banker. It’s titled Kangaroo and it is December 15, 2005.

Writing about December 2005 coincides with contact with sweet Sarah, a dear co-worker from those days. Sarah was a beleaguered office manager after working alongside me at the reception desk. It seemed I was not cut out to be office manager though after Sarah left the Putnam Lovell fold I actually became the de facto office manager, sans title and salary.

It fell to Sarah to arrange a holiday party and still did a great job, finding a mansion off Fifth Avenue, getting it catered, and hiring a DJ as well as a choral group from Columbia University to sing holiday classics. I was having a good time, ingesting substances, and getting drunk.

Sarah and her husband who was there as well lived in NJ and we shared a towncar home, me being dropped off in Hoboken and the two of them off to the wilds of NJ. The car slowly drove down Ninth Avenue and at a red light her husband decided to get out of the car and walk down 47th Street.

Sarah called out for him but he wasn’t hearing her. I got out of the car and chased him down, grabbing him by the arm and spinning him around. I yelled at him, ‘What the fuck are you doing’. He mewed ‘Leave me alone’ I told him to stop acting like a faggot and get in the car.

He was stunned by me saying that. I told yes, I am a Gay man and you are being a little faggot. It actually got him in the car. I had a feeling this guy was a jerk, not so much an asshole but a mere jerk. Apparently, he was a controlling narcissist and after 20 years Sarah had enough of his manipulation.

Bill and I went to her wedding in San Francisco twenty years ago which coincided with my sister’s fiftieth birthday wish we also went to surprise her. After the wedding and reception, Sarah and her husband and friends went out for some after-party cocktails. We did the tourist thing, riding a cable car.

There was a semi-aggressive homeless guy panhandling and Sarah’s new husband took it upon himself to loudly berate the homeless guy which proved to be embarrassing for all concerned.

Maya Angelou said it best: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

It was a nice enough Saturday to go for a bike ride. Since it was Saturday my plan was to go to Liberty State Park. Bill was on the road again since early morning, before I was awake. I woke up around 9 AM and resolved to do things a little bit earlier.

I had a light breakfast and then I was at Shop Rite stocking up on groceries. The bike started rolling soon enough, after a quick walk to the local Bibliotheque to pick up The Party Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell. I still have the Jon Savage and Michael Palin tomes. The librarian remarked that this particular book was small.

The ride was pleasant and uneventful. There were people out and about but not too many and they were responsive to the buzzer and stepped out of the way. I almost hit a dog though. By the hospital, a woman was not really paying attention to the fact I was fast approaching and her little dog was sure to get clipped.

It almost happened in the supermarket this morning too. People bring their dogs to the store. They’re not service animals, it’s just their owner did not want to leave them alone or chained up outside. I usually remark to Bill, “Ohh look a dog in the supermarket!”

And this morning a woman was staring at the items on the shelf, not looking at her dog being in the path of a grocery cart.

Overall the ride was uneventful and I am cool with that. It was nearly nonstop, meaning if I stopped it was usually for a minute to drink some water. There’s been a Good Times marathon on cable, not sure if it was a scheduled thing or a tribute to John Amos. So that’s been on all day.

I did watch part of a documentary on 9/11, just to see the neighborhood in Tribeca that I walk around in on my afternoon break. I wanted to see what had changed and was was still around. I couldn’t really tell where anything was.

The documentary was a compilation of videos shot by people who were down there. Some professional digital employees and some average people starting their day. So much misinformation was around in those hours and days.

Rumors that the Washington Mall was under attack, the White House being a target. Maybe that was true since Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, PA and that was hijacked as well. I do remember the day vividly and now work in the area of the Manhattan attack, helping people who were affected by the aftermath.

I still think it’s somewhat noble, I read anecdotes throughout the day about where the client was and for how long they were in the area since they were told everything was OK, and the air was fine. Now they are developing cancers and other ills due to the malfeasance of the powers that used to be. That is brought up in Spike Lee’s 9/11 documentary as well.