At Juan Pelota's, Grooving....

It's 10:34 am and I'm sitting here at one of the tables outside Juan Pelota's, certainly an extraordinary place in so many ways.  It's the first installment in the adventures of the day. 

I'm functionally broke now, and there's a certain relief in that.  Kind of a "Whew, glad that's over!"  No more watching the spending with a gimlet eye.  Now I can relax.  I have broken through that massive barrier called flat-broke and, hey, it's another dimension altogether.  Kinda kewl in its own way.

Allen was on duty.  On duty.  Isn't that a heckofaway to talk about him?  I mean, there he was just this fountain of information.  So I asked, "How long you folks been open?"

"Since @$#%burblewalluspup," he said.  I forgot to mention my hearing isn't what it used to be.  I asked him to repeat it and he raised the volume a bit and slowed down. "It's been a year this May.  So we've been open...what?  Fifteen months now."

Very kewl.

"And what else can you tell me?" I asked.  "Details, please.  The readers demand details, the more dramatic the better."

"Well," he said, "you know that Juan Pelota is a nickname?"

"Oh?"

"Juan is a play on words.  Kinda sounds like 'one,' right?  And pelota in Spanish means--"

"Ball," I said.  Might as well show off my meager Spanish while we're at it.

"Right.  So...'one ball?'"  He's looking at me like everything should now be perfectly clear, but it isn't.

I'm waiting for the punchline.

"Lance Armstrong owns this place,"  Allen says.  Big grin.

Now that's--and suddenly...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh,  I freakin' get it.  Lance was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had one testicle removed.

Jeez, the cleverness of it.  I feel like El Pendejo finally coming in out of the rain.

He also walked me through the punning of "Mellow Johnny's."  Apparently it's a pun on the French for "yellow jersey," Lance's colors.  Mmmmm, doesn't that speak volumes about this place?

Then he showed me the bikes in the other room that Lance rode.  There are four there, and I just came back to the big notebook computer from asking for more information.

The first bike is one he rode in 1996 while he was sick.  "That's why that one's so significant," I was told by a very helpful young man.

The yellow Trek was one he rode in winning the Tour de France (date not available).  And the other two are also winners.

I walked around the display room just a bit, feeling somewhat guilty to be a pauper in the midst of such gleaming and wonderfully constructed machinery.  And of course I'm a bicycle junkie who is currently riding...junk.  Oops, the Beast heard that so I can expect some rough pedalling today.  Royal Purple Majestic junk, I must add.  My mechanical Sweetie who lugs me hither and yon.

Personal history tidbit: In 1973 I rode a Fuji with sew-up tires from Lawrence, Kansas to Boulder, Colorado.  It was one of those peak events Maslow speaks of.  Molly rode all the way with me, and we stopped in every little tavern all the way across the sweltering state of Kansas.  August of 1973.  We camped, we drank, we made love, we laughed, and we were young and our lives stretched out before us like a highway whose end is so far away it's beyond the horizon of the possible.  I was still immortal then, if you know what I mean.  And the trip was so extraordiary, it made me feel so wonderfully alive that I promised myself I would do this again and again. 

But that was, what?  36 years ago this month.  And I've never done anything like it since.  Shame on me!  (Maybe this Vision Quest will qualify?)

Now I am drinking some delicious coffee in a place owned by Lance Armstrong, who is surely a quintessential American Hero.  I'm feeling so honored and delighted to have stumbled on this place.  Again, a tip of the hat to Darrin, the barrista at Blu.  Darrin turned me on to it.

And you know what? Sooner or later lots of people will be reading this blog.  And when that happens I want to ask you to do yourself a favor:  keep Juan Pelota in mind.  Their coffee is just right, their service is terrific, and they gotta have one of the best bike shops on the planet.  If you're gonna buy a bike, why not buy it from Superman?  Or the essential equivalent thereof?

And tell 'em Homeless Elijah sent you.  Smile.

I just started this blog a couple of days ago, and I have some ideas for creating readership.  Yesterday I made up some invitations and will have them printed out.  Fortunately, I have enough coins for the copy machine--I think.  If not I can do them by hand.

It's all good.

This is Elijah, your man on the street, in the third day of his Vision Quest.  By the very act of reading this, you, too, are on the Quest.  You're with me.  Someone whose life I have touched, however slightly.

Good to have you here.  Bookmark me?  I'll get RSS going once I figure out how to do it.

The coffee has given up the ghost.  I will push on.

Much peace and aloha,

Elijah