Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Following a day of prodigious wind on Saturday, we have finally arrived at the warm and sunny weather that you would expect in May. I have been wearing shorts, and my lightest shirts. We roamed in fine conditions over the weekend; on Sunday morning I was up early, to hear the birds chattering before the sun was up, and to ride a little in the early sunshine, which was quite magical – mainly because I was nowhere near where the Bay to Breakers folks were starting to assemble.

On Monday evening my student group met South of Market again, this time in a co-working space on the sixth floor of a building. It was still just warm enough to sit on the balcony, looking out over the Bay Bridge, and over to the lengthening shadows on the surrounding buildings. We could almost see where we used to sit for the Monday lunchtime outdoor meditations for all those years. 

BART has been having some difficulties recently; on Tuesday morning, after a very pleasant sit at Mukunda, with a couple of regulars and a new person, I got down to the station to find no service running south of Oakland. I took the first train – which was quite a wait, and got off at West Oakland, as I sometimes did before the pandemic on a summer morning. I was glad to remember the roads and the turns as I got to Jack London Square, outpacing the train that was whistling through the crossings just behind me, and then the more familiar roads from when I exclusively took the ferry during the worst of the pandemic – until the Alameda Seaplane route opened up, and I switched my commute to that line. 

In the evening, I had checked the BART app before heading to the station (I was too late to ride to the ferry), and it promised trains to the city; when I arrived at Fruitvale, the station was gated and closed. I decided to ride up E 12th St to the downtown Oakland stations which I hadn’t tried to do for several years, and was glad that it was not as grim as I remembered (a combination of poor road surface and fast-moving traffic, even if there was a painted bike lane the whole way).

I have purposefully left the upcoming holiday weekend almost completely unscheduled, and have a plan to ride at least three mornings, as well as sit down on Sunday to watch the English football season wrap up. Usually something gets in the way of my holiday plans like this, but hopefully not this time.