'Frisco

As beautiful as it is in downtown San Francisco, my mind is blown when I think of how many people chose to live there. It's not just San Francisco, but any major city. Nate and I walk up to street level from the BART station, and we are inundated by about ten thousand people. I feel like the city is just a massive farm of skyscrapers, and I wonder how people can feel any sort of privacy or familiarity in such a massive place. There is just too much too know: too many streets, too many stores, too many strangers, too many cars, not enough parking, and too many expenses. Granted, there are plenty of beautiful girls, which I can not complain about, and I know that I am only here for a visit, not to live, so I don't actually get too worked up about it. We walk through Chinatown, and sip on bubble tea and peruse the wall-sized selection of fine teas at the Red Tea Company. We go into the City Lights bookstore where I have been once before and think about its significance in the history of literature, and get lost in its massively interesting selection. We go up into the poetry room and show each other some of our favorite poems. We go into Vesuvio's for a drink, and this is apparently another place where Jack Kerouac frequented. The bar is amazing: two stories, a ton of beer, and enough photos and decorations to keep the most ADD-addled child busy for hours. We also see some cool art in a few galleries and eat fresh cream puffs from Beard Papa's. It's a good day in town but I can only stand a gargantuan metropolis for so long. It's back to BART at this point. We have many videogames, which may be our most binding common interest, ahead of us to play, and I think about the maintenance I need to do on my bike. About 3000 miles have rolled away under my wheels since the last time I changed my oil, so that is a given. I need to clean and lubricate my chain and check my tires. Not all that hard, just basic stuff that is important, but I'll save it for tomorrow since it's already late.
When we wake up we eat and spend the day playing Halo and exercising and swimming and sitting in the hot tub. I change my oil after getting the necessary supplies minus a filter wrench. All the stores are closed when I realize that my hands alone aren't enough to get the old filter off. Night is falling and I'm laying under my motorcycle trying a thousand different positions to get leverage. Nate checks to see if his roommate happens to have one, which he does not. Earlier in the day there was a guy working on his dirt bike in his seemingly fully stocked garage, but he is nowhere to be seen. It takes about a half hour but I finally get the old filter off, drain it into the oil pan, coat the rubber gasket of the new filter and finish up the procedure. When I check the new oil level, the oil is so clear and the light so dim that at first I think I am way low, which would be horrible since I have no more oil,but I eventually see that it's just super clear. We spend the rest of the evening watching the Big Lebowski and drinking fine beer.