14 September 2010
Anxiety
(Hubrismobile at rest, American Service Center. File Photo)
Virginia’s implacable Department of Motor Vehicles is on my ass, or rather on that of the Hubrismobile, whose fine leather seats are affixed to mine. I could see the back of the yellow inspection tag on the windshield was either a “9” or a “6” backwards, and it is time to get out the wallet and prove to the State that everything works.
I drove over to the dealership and turned the fine precision vehicle over to Emily, the astute service concierge, who swapped out my left rear brake bulb in record time and at no charge the last time the instrument panel yelled at me for non-compliance.
She is a model of efficiency, though she acknowledged that today is the day to spend some money. She in turn delivered me to Max, the sultan of quality cabriolets and the cognizant official for my vehicle. I am a little anxious about the whole thing.
All I want is a little validation that the brakes work, and an oil change, but any time I go near the place I discover some astonishing discrepancy in compliance with the technical specs that causes the plastic on the credit card to melt.
The Hubrismobile attracts rocks, for example. 32,000 miles on the odometer and I have had two windshields. You could work on the Bluemobile Police Inteceptor with a ball peen hammer for the afternoon and not damage the thing. On the Hubrismobile, I am on the second set of high-performance tires and brakes.
I wonder who the maniac is that drives the thing.
I have been contemplative enough the last few weeks between the two projects I have been parading past you. It has been noticed.
My pal Boats slapped me across the face yesterday, metaphorically, of course, but as a retired Master Chief Bos’un, I take his comments to heart.
He wrote from lovely Annapolis to tell me to get a grip, and I will comply with alacrity. I have been juggling the two projects in these electronic pages- the saga of the Pacific War from the horse’s mouth- and the decline and fall of my parents, which has left me dazed, disorganized and more than a little frantic.
Boats said I was “extraordinarily pool-dependent for exercise and depression/anxiety relief.” I absolutely agree with him, and was pacing around the parking lot with a five-pound dumb-bell in the dying light of the Monday sun trying to keep my crucial vitamin D count up, and the mental wolves at bay. On the loop around Big Pink I looked at the pool furniture nearly placed around the blue water and the padlock on the gate. Only open two more days.
Boats is right, of course. He is a proud Coon-ass from southeast Louisiana, and he has brought me around to thinking I ought to be spending December through February down there.
He doesn’t like winter as a concept, and I am increasingly coming around to his point of view, particularly if we get socked with another one here like last winter.
Another friend has strongly recommended Vitamin D is massive quantities in oral form, and I am taking that on-board as well.
Boats thinks I have “succumbed to the urban apartment/ condo dweller syndrome and your outdoor life begins and ends with the opening and closing of the complex pool.”
Damn if he is not right. I was watching the conclusion to season three of True Blood, thinking as much of Louisiana and winter as much as the handsome vampires and shape shifters who inhabit the territory.
Boats thinks I ought to get out of Washington, maybe give Annapolis a try. So long as I am shackled to the job, I think I will have to stay on here, since the commute from the water would drive me mad. The trip from Fairfax to the Pentagon all those years certainly had me on the edge of sanity or beyond.
Boats said: “Get on the motor cycle this week end and come to Annapolis, lets get a drink at the Fleet Reserve but by all means lets visit the Brigade sports complex at the Naval Academy, the bike trail to Baltimore, and sample the pleasures of West street.”
He has a distinct point. He watches nature from his balcony, hawks and eagles wheeling on the shore.
“Closing the Big Pink pool does not shut down nature, just apparently your most important daily window on it when living in the bowels of the building. I think you have been "urbanized" into a three season blue funk,” he concluded.
I always listen to the Master Chief. The pool is open for two more days this weekend. I am hoping for good weather, but after that, it is time for a change.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!