vroom vroom

Today I saw a fire truck getting hosed down at Stevens Creek Reservoir. This was a ride-by sighting and the actual mechanics of the scene escaped me—Was it in the water, on the shore, on a pier? And how?—but it registered in my periphery like a shiny red elephant attended by a man in overalls. There was a glittering rain and the lake was green and smiling. It was a fraction of a second and it was lovely.

I have a cotton-candy, whirligig notion—a completely inane soap bubble of an idea—of an alternate reality comprising all these things I half-see in the process of scanning the road as a responsible/paranoid/uninsured cyclist. Sidewalk chalk, handshakes on doorsteps, retreating deer, and I would double-take but for the impending pothole or semi or hairpin and so instead I have these partially developed photographs, semiconscious and rife with imagined detail where my brain has tried to edit for eyes that had to look elsewhere.

...

Back in the real world, fire engines are awesome. If you get no thrill whatsoever when a fire engine goes by, you need to take your inner child out for ice cream.

Exhibit A: "The ambulances will have to wait their turn."
Exhibit B: "Does the fireman in his red hat come to your house in his red fire engine?"—the illustrious Shel Silverstein, "Uncle Shelby's ABZ's"