It was a brilliant sunny day. The chilly rain from yesterday evening had cleared up completely. I mused that I might actually just have fun and relax today, but then I remembered that it was long past the time to do laundry. I had been down to my last clean t-shirt, and had just spilled sesame seed oil over the front while rinsing my gums that morning. Laundry went straight to the top of my agenda.
My smartphone mapping app told me that there was a coin laundry just up Milpas Street from the waterfront. I pumped coffee into my leftover fast food cup in the lobby (where the television was still showing reports from the massacre). Then wearing a brand new pair of Columbia pants from REI, and the well wrinkled white dress shirt that Okki had given me at Burning Man, I stuffed my very full laundry sack into the trunk of my car and headed up Milpas in my car.
On the other side of 101, I saw up ahead that the street was blocked off. From the way that the barricades were set up, I inferred that it was either a street festival or a parade. It turned out to be the latter. For the second time this year on my travels, I have found up driving right into a parade (the first was last July in Minot, North Dakota, where I nearly became an entrant into the parade for the North Dakota State Fair).
The detour was forcing all the traffic onto side streets. Santa Barbara is a nightmare to navigate under normal circumstances, but now it was three times as bad. As I seem to do every time I venture out it, I wound up going down a dead end street that was blocked by the serpentine 101 that cuts the street grid in awkward unpredictable ways.
After a couple forced turns, I had lost track of where I needed to, to reach the laundromat on Milpas. I pulled over next to park to check my smartphone map. I was still about five blocks away.
When I turned the key to crank the engine, the battery was dead. I wasn't really surprised. The battery was old, and it had failed as I left Burning Man (what a story that was). It had conked out completely in Bakersfield in September when I left the lights on overnight at the Super 8. The AAA responder had verified that my alternator was OK, and that I simply needed a new battery. I had put it off, and now the day of reckoning had arrived.
Fortunately I was parked in a convenient location. Google maps told me there was an AutoZone only siz blocks away.
I decided to tackle laundry first. I schlepped my large laundry bag out of the trunk and started toting it across the park towards the direction of the laundromat. It was heavy and the string from the bag cut into my hand.
It was a relief to finally reach Milpas. I passed by the area where the various parade participants were waiting for their turn. A Santa Barbara trolley was parked along the side street, the open windows filled with children with balloons.
With my bag over my shoulder, I thought I must have looked like a homeless person, but that is not how the children saw me.
I had forgotten that it was December. When they saw me pass by, they started yelling "It's Santa Claus!" If only they had seen me before I lost twenty pounds, shaved off my beard, and cleared up my rosacea!
The laundry was on the far side of the street. I crossed during a break in the parade. After putting my clothes in the washers and feeding in thirteen quarters for each load, I went back out to the street to watch the parade, sitting on a concrete ledge next to a line of newspaper racks. Around my feet were scattered folios of free community newspapers. From one of them, I learned that I was watching the Milpas Holiday Parade. The theme for 2012 was "A better, brighter youth."
As I sat watching the parade, a woman approached the racks and looked briefly at them before moving on, muttering, "I just can't stand to look at the news today."
As it happened, I was just in time to catch the very end, which was a Santa Barbara Fire Department engine loaded with children and with Santa Claus, the real deal this time, wearing sunglasses and waving right back at me.
After my laundry was dried, I walked back to the car, hurriedly with the load on my shoulder. By this time the battery had recovered a little charge and the car started. A lucky break. I hadn't been looking forward to toting the old battery to the AutoZone.
By this time the side streets were mercifully clear. I drove to the AutoZone, where I swapped it out for a brand new one, for a mere one hundred and forty bucks.
Well that's why I work, isn't it? So I pay for these little expenses of life without batting an eye.
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