dreamer's just a vessel

Remember this? Circa fourth-grade music class, the lesson on singing a round?

My pad-dle's clean and bright
Flash-ing with sil-ver
Foll-ow the wild goose flight
Dip dip and swing

That is not quite the urban kayak experience, but I had a good time dispatching the kayaking list item with Agent Valencia anyway. Zig-zagging clumsily up and down the channel between Oakland and Alameda, I saw houseboats (one with my name, nearly), tugboats (they're not little at all!), sailboats (lurching at impossible angles), and best of all:

Belly of the beast.

Fantastic! I love the Oakland cranes like I love the sound of jets, or tall scaffolding, or the the concrete horizon of a runway. I'm supposed to be a treehugger; it doesn't even make sense.

Anyway, there was also a fluffy bird that the Internet says is called a bufflehead and a man repainting the red hull of a boat named RELIEF. It was a brilliant, stupendous red; he put it on with a roller and it was almost too bright to watch.