Morning in the East Bay

It’s morn­ing in El Cer­ri­to — or is it Albany? I’ve nev­er been cer­tain about the bor­ders here in the East Bay. I stopped at a Shell sta­tion to get fuel for the Guzzi and a lit­tle caf­feine for myself.

Across San Pablo from me is a police­man who has pulled over a bicy­clist. The bicy­clist has a trail­er attached to her bike, and the trail­er has a trash bar­rel on it and some rakes and tools.

It looks like the two of them are flirt­ing. There’s casu­al con­ver­sa­tion, laugh­ter. The bicy­clist’s body lan­guage is open and she’s mov­ing around quite a bit. Her upper body is ani­mat­ed. The offi­cer is lean­ing on the trunk of his cruiser.

He gave her the tick­et almost five min­utes ago and still they are chat­ting it up. I’m just watch­ing from the park­ing area of the Shell sta­tion, my cup of cof­fee pre­car­i­ous­ly bal­anced on the Guzzi’s gas tank as my foun­tain pen scratch­es across the page. I won­der if the police­man is ask­ing the bicy­clist out.

A sec­ond patrol car pulls up behind the two, but very lit­tle changes. Even after the sec­ond offi­cer joins in, it still looks like a friend­ly chat between a bicy­clist and two uni­formed patrol­men. A garbage truck goes by in the end­less stream of cars con­tain­ing peo­ple on their way to work, thou­sands of peo­ple closed off in steel and glass while these three across San Pablo broad­cast stand at the side of the street, alive, exposed, nat­ur­al, and engaged with one another.

The bicy­clist ped­als away with her trail­er, and one cruis­er fol­lows the oth­er around the cor­ner. When the cars are turned away from me, I can read: Albany Police. That makes sense; the lit­tle hill I can almost see from here is in Albany. The town of El Cer­ri­to does­n’t actu­al­ly have a lit­tle hill.

I fin­ish my cof­fee and ride back across the bridge to my side of the Bay. There’s noth­ing like friend­li­ness in those who might oth­er­wise be adver­saries to make the morn­ing feel like the world is a’right.