The empty BART station cupped us in its yellow embrace as we stood, waiting, for the next train.  It would not come for ten minutes, dooming us to glance, glance, glance at the digital sign that declared variously 1) no trains were headed to San Francisco, 2) escalators were offline, and 3) that the next train was 10, 39 minutes en route.

Glance.  Nine minutes.  Glance. Still nine minutes.  It was a moment where you recognized the act of waiting.  Then you thought back to all the moments where you waited.  Then you waited.  Eight minutes.  Then the train was suddenly there with a quiet roar.

We were headed into San Francisco for a party, a gathering, to a auto-da-fé of pizza, burning in a wood oven.  Happy birthdays were given, drinks were received, and conversation slathered like sauce on bread.  Red sauce on pasta, even.

The zeitgeist of the evening was Zeitgeist, where barely acceptable Damnation was shared and we waited for Godot (in the form of the Tamale Lady).  She did not show but it did not prevent us from waiting.

Afterwards, back on the BART, a ruby-faced Ruby hacker accosted us in a green cape with a butterfly on the lapel, with green eyes.  He signed to us, “Are you a group or are you just friends?”  Stumbling over his words, his sign language stuttered and started amid weirdly surreal smiles.  He came from every Dungeons and Dragons game ever known.  He wore himself like a cloak.

Once on the train again, the memory of Green Cloak fading, we spoke of stalkers and sign language.

I’ve started running again in the last few weeks, and I am amazed at two things. One: How fast your fitness level goes down after a few months of inactivity. Two: How one’s basic fitness level doesn’t go down after a few months of inactivity.

“I can’t believe it, I’m carrying the weight of two of my child in fat, right now,” my friend said. Indeed, when one puts it that way, measuring that quantity of fat, pointing out that well, here’s 30 pounds of fat and here is your child, also 30 pounds. There’s something visceral about that.

When you are driving in the urban wilderness, what is there to hunt? The most common game is McDonalds, lurking around every corner. Occasionally you’ll stumble upon a doe-eyed Chipotle, or a furry In-n-Out, delectable game in their own right. But these meals are hardly healthy, and it’s almost impossible for our over-specialized traveling busy city on-the-go jet set selves to get a simple healthful meal quickly.

Not that healthy couldn’t be fast. Not at all.

Here’s something I would like to see:

Bob on the Go
A Healthy Fast Food Dining Establishment
(Franchises Available)

M  E  N  U

• Spicy Chicken Vindaloo with Rice and Vegetables
• Blackened Carribean Jerk Chicken Breast with Vegetable Gumbo
• Sausage and Potato soup with Spaetzle noodles
• Garden Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette and Fresh Vegetables
• Baked Potato and Steak Salad
• Spicy Buffalo Chicken Burger

I don’t know.  None of the above items is fried but they are extremely simple to prepare.  I know tastes vary and mine do fall to the spicy side of the spectrum.  When you read the above, fast food doesn’t even enter the mind at all — and that’s true for a big reason:  fast food is fast precisely because it’s fried (with the exception of fast-mex like Chipotle or Baja Fresh).

Far from me to add my moan to the moans of many who … bemoan the fast food world we are in, I declare as of today I refuse to eat any kind of fast food for minimum one year.  This excludes sit-down restaurants that are social events.  (P.S. this includes Chipotle, which my friends know is a toughie for me.)

Come — join me in my fast food fast.