Thai for tea

July 9, 2025

Late yesterday afternoon there was a scare when I realized I'd lost another credit card, and not just any credit card. This is the one that most matters because it's the one we use for most of our business transactions, including bookings, various recurring payments, and Airbnb reservations. There's the risk of fraud of course, but for me the main concern is that if we lose it again as we've done so often in the past we'll have to go through another tedious cycle of reattaching all of those threads to a new card.

I think back to the last time I'm certain I had it, and it was at Clever Cycles when I pulled it out to make payment and was told if I used a debit card instead it would save me 3%. So I filed it away somewhere - in my wallet, or in my shirt pocket, or maybe even dropped it on the floor and didn't hear it land. In any case, it vanished somewhere between there and when I returned home about two hours later after having dinner across the street at Lucky Lab.

There aren't many candidates there: it's here in the apartment and I just can't find it - right in front of my face, or in a shirt or pants pocket, or buried when something got laid upon it. This happens over and over and over again now, where we lose something, perform an exhaustive search, finally give up, and then presto, here it is somehow. In the same way that I've lost nearly all of my street clothes in the transition to the new apartment, and have been making do on an embarrassingly small change of clothes until they finally turn up.

Not this time though, and finally I decide to check to see if I dropped it in the car somehow - maybe I set it on top of my rucksack in the passenger seat and it slid off the side somehow - after all, that's what happened to my drivers license and credit card down in SLO, not to be rediscovered until Andrea was unpacking the Raven after she and Bruce drove it home for us.

But no, I can't find it in the car either. So maybe it landed on the sidewalk somewhere (and in this neighborhood, would undoubtedly have been scooped up by now), or maybe it's just because it's still so hard for me to see something like that down on a black floor mat.

Back upstairs again, I find Rachael studying our recent bank transactions looking for evidence of fraud, but the only new charge is the expected one - for my dinner at Lucky Lab. I ask her if she'll go down and cast her better eyes on the floor of the car just in case, but not long after she's gone it dawns on me. Seeing the charge on the account reminds me that I left the card at the bar for my open tab, but then just walked out the door at the end without paying the bill.

A quick call confirms they're holding it for me, and the woman says it's no biggie, it happens all the time.

__________

This morning's plan is to bike east to Andrea's house for a visit and a mug of Thai tea that she promised to brew for me. She like many people has been concerned or alarmed by my recent behavior, but she must feel like it's safe to let me on her property now that I'm at least sharing my thoughts in complete sentences again.

After that I have a second item on the list - to swing by Lucky Lab on the way home after it opens at eleven and pick up the credit card. I know myself reasonably well by now, and so to make sure I don't forget I send myself an email as a reminder. And then I head off with the bike over to Ovation to work on the blog until it's time to head east.

I like this! The crow points the way to our room when we step off the elevator. Ours is the one at the very end of the hall, facing us.

I'm really enjoying the view here in the morning, with all the reflections off the glass. It's like the sky or a view up the river from one of the bridges, and different every day.

And the interior layout works well for me too. The window sill is deep and light enough that I can spread my belongings out on it where they're more likely to be seen when I leave.

I'm slower getting done with the post I'm wrapped up in than I expected, so when 9 approaches I call Andrea to alert her that I'm running late; and in the end I don't show until around 10:15. I'm really pleased by how I'm doing on the bike there, zipping along at really pretty much my usual pre-GCA pace, making every single light as I glide down Harvey Milk Street to the waterfront, loudly whistling On a Clear Day and the 59th Street Bridge Song as I go.

And I'm proud of myself for having mastered the sometimes tricky navigation for this route - especially through the Ladd Addition with its two circles each having spokes radiating in a half dozen directions from them, and with at least three of those marked as bike routes. I've got it, I brag to myself as I confidently bike east and uphill on Andrea's street; until it dawns on me that something's not right here, and soon I emerge back on Division Street again. Curses, foiled again!

Andrea leads me and Roddy around the side of the house and to a lawn table in the shade, with me stopping on the way to admire her fantastic garden where everything seems to be in bloom all at once right now. And over the next two hours we have a fine visit that takes us through one interesting topic or story after another while in the background are the sights and sounds of birds - a song sparrow, a scrub-jay, and even a hummingbird.

Sitting there, I'm reminded of what my life was like for about a decade after I got out of the army and before I started my IT career. It was really quite different then than now, where really I'm pretty socially isolated for a variety of reasons. Back then though I actually had a number of close friends and confidants, mostly folks in the immediate neighborhood that I'd managed to break the ice and connect with. Connie, the wife of a law professor and president of the Salem Symphony; Gene the electrician; Emily, the wife of a professor at Chemeketa, an artist who specialized in creating intricate miniature matchbox size houses; Mahema the Sufi dancer; Marilyn and Bill, one of the couples that went in with us to buy a community truck for hauling compost and the like; Linda and Paul, the Unitarian couple interested in experimenting with group marriage; Harry the well-driller; Tom, the man whom I biked the North Cascades with the summer after Saint Helens blew its top; and on and on. Most days would find me on somebody's porch chatting away for an hour or two or in the cab of a pickup with some trade person making his rounds.

Suddenly, it feels like I'm stepping back into an existence more like that. What is this, the fifth day straight where I've shared an extended freely ranging chat with one person after another, three of them complete strangers? So that's interesting.

Eventually time comes to wrap it up for now. An embrace is exchanged, and I'm about to step down the stairs to the sidewalk when Andrea suggests that Roddy's feelings might be hurt if I just leave him in the back yard. Out of sight, out of mind - just as is the Lucky Lab when I blow right past it without noticing as I raced the lights west toward the Hawthorne Bridge.

Rachael is kind enough not to chide me for it when I step in the door sans credit card, but I'm sure inside she must he shaking her head a bit. "You only had one job, Scooter." Not that it would have helped if I had remembered though, because when I drive back over I'm chagrined to see that it's closed and dark inside. It doesn't open until 4, and I came up with 11 because that's when Clever Cycles opens. Not too clever.

Which is pretty funny, but not the funniest thing that happens today. That comes when I stop by Cafe Umbria on the way home because I need to park the Whale in a different zone than the one it's been cooling it's wheels in all morning. There's only one parking spot available, and it's a tight one on the narrow street lining the South Park Blocks behind the Schnitzer Auditorium. It's a challenge of a parallel parking job which I ace by nailing it smoothly the first time, and as I cross the street to the parking meter I'm mentally thanking dad for teaching me this one neat trick when he taught me to drive sixty years ago.

And then I try to pay for my parking space but can't because the card slot is jammed (I'm using the debit card since the other is still over at the Lab). I lean over to see if I can tell what the issue is, and burst out laughing. Because I can't inset my card into the slot because it's in use. Someone else got here first, claimed their spot, and then walked off leaving their credit card behind.

Do you think it's funny that on the same day I'm trying to get back the card I left behind last night I come across someone else's card that they left behind? I think it's funny. I think it's a laugh-out-loud riot.

Today's ride: 12 miles (19 km)
Total: 21 miles (34 km)

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