Escape from Pinole

Through a series of mishaps I’m not going to describe, one of our wedding attendants, my friend Mallika, is missing her bridesmaid’s outfit. It’s now three weeks to the wedding, and those dresses have to be ordered six weeks in advance!

Wait, don’t panic- Diane found a exact duplicate in the right size, here in the bay area. The only complication being, it’s in Pinole. So guess where I drove tonight!

Quick aside-
I was in San Lorenzo, on the way to Alice(Diane’s mom)’s place to drop off her ham when I saw flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I had been warned numerous times not to speed on this stretch of road, so while it was a big bummer it wasn’t a big surprise.

But hold on- the cars passed me. It was a minivan taxi followed by about five police cars.
I was witnessing a high speed chase! Well, not very high-speed, they were driving about 30 mph. The taxi turned into the mall and the police followed it…

This was very weird. Then it got even weirder- the taxi pulled up in front of me and slowed down… but the police seemed to have lost it. The police shut down the road farther up… I was still pulled over. What was going on?

If it was a real chase, why were they driving so slowly? Maybe it was a escort of a VIP or something?

Then I realized the car in front of me was NOT the original taxi- it was just one that looked identical. A decoy maybe? Or just a coincidence? The original taxi being chased tooled around a little bit in the mall and then drove past me in the opposite direction, from whence it came. The police followed.

The worst part is, I still have no idea what the hell that was. How would I even find out? Was there a gangster in the car? A deranged taxi driver? Or a VIP with an escort?

Riiight. I dropped the ham off at Alice’s and started off towards Pinole, armed only with a Yahoo map. I started to fret a little because of vague warnings from ShaC that the exit would be on the left. As pondered it I took the wrong fork off 880 and ended up going towards the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Ok, I figured there would be a way to turn around just before the toll booths, like at Golden Gate.

Nope! I had to pay my $2 and drive to Treasure Island… which is crazy by the way; getting on and off the bridge from the island is like landing on an aircraft carrier. I wonder what it would be like to live there… do they have convenience stores? Probably. Whole Foods / Andronico’s? Probably not. Movie theaters? Not. Plus you get to ride the bridge EVERY DAY. You better hope you work in the city as opposed to the East Bay, because otherwise you have to pay a toll just to get home.

As it turned out the left exit is for carpoolers.

Driving past Berkeley, none of my mainstream radio stations would come in for some reason. Mix 106 and 92.7 PARTY I could understand, since they both have crappy transmitters… but even 104.9 seemed to be playing some very weird noise music. It’s a little late for April Fools! I reasoned that this must be the pirate radio station which operates out of Berkeley.

Finally got to David’s Bridal. The store in Pinole is a funny place- it has window displays but you cannot see into the store, a little like one of the designer stores in San Francisco (like the Banana Republic store, which for some reason is recently entirely white, khaki, and lime).

The whole of David’s Bridal is racks and racks of dresses- about 60% white dresses for the bride, and 39.9999% colored bridesmaid’s dresses. And in a tiny corner there are two suits. And a binder. For the men. Two.

I thumbed through the wedding resource guides (there is a lot of cool random stuff you can buy for your wedding!) and found a new toy at the counter- the “swift attacher” gun!

You know those thin plastic fibers that hold paper tags onto clothing in the store? the ones you just snap off when you get your new clothes home? The one 1990’s hip hop artists like Digital Underground meticulously preserved on their clothes, the one that the store won’t accept returns without? Okay, well there is a little gun which puts those on. It has a needle and it forces the thin side through the needle, which in turn is forced through the fabric. The thicker heads are all connected in a belt- but you just snap them apart. Pretty cool!

So, I need one of these. ShaC says they are pretty cheap on eBay… I want to make a shirt or something with these fibers sitcking out of it like eyelashes or pin feathers- hundreds of them. I have to sketch it first but I think it could work!