And I even would have gone on Friday, at lunch, if I had remembered its early closing.
I did a lot of stretching then 15' on the stairmill at level 8, something over 43 floors when I stopped paying attention. Also I ran two miles at 5.1 mph, not the 6 mph at which I could just complete 5K but with a 2% incline instead of barely 1%. I'm going to work up to 5K at 2%, and then up to 5%, and only then increase my speed.
Kal, Neal, RDC, and I went out for sushi, on the way passing the All-Inn, which supposedly isn't as much of a crack hotel anymore. It now has a bar at street level, the Rock Bar, whose foot traffic should suppress at least some drug traffic. Neal or RDC said he meant to go there one of these days, and so we agreed to go after sushi. Sushi was great: good and close to home. The Rock Bar was fun in an entirely different way.
First of all, me in a bar. Consulting a physician soon after we started dating, RDC mentioned that he now went out for milkshakes more than for beer. The doctor told him to stick to beer. I have employed various excuses to avoid bars but the main one, smoke, went out the window when Colorado recently banned all indoor smoking. And what the hell, I'm all kinds of adventurous these days and--I only just now noticed this--never seriously considered bailing. Note: caffeinate self thoroughly before such evenings.
We settled into a huge semi-circular booth, three whiskeys and a club soda. Kal was drinking whiskey! Wine, sure, at book club all the time; I might have seen her drink a beer before too. But whiskey, when her and my previous activities have been going to author events or to see "Ladies in Lavender" (starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith) or to stroll around the Botanic Gardens. Once on an apparent bender we saw "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" so this on its own cracked me up.
RDC says it is not the dive-iest bar I have ever been in--true, I even had a shot, an Alabama Slammer, at the PS Lounge once--but it was low rent and down-market and, for a meat market, a novelty to me as only a bar instead of mainly a restaurant.
I was seat-dancing for a while, too chicken to dance alone or to throw myself into the company of the unknown women already there, until Kal decided she could go with me. My god, the music. Van Halen, the Scorpions, Billy Squier, Foreigner. During "Jesus Is Just All Right," Kal left the Doobie Brothers and me for the lav (an adventure in itself: someone threw up on Neal's shoes and RDC swore he saw bloodstains from a misjudged heroin injection) and I danced with the two women remaining from a group of several who had arrived together but long since paired up with the luckier among a bunch of men whom--my table was sure--they had never met before.
We showed our ages in various ways: Kal by never having heard the by-far lightest song all night, the Cars' "Shake It Up" and Neal by suggesting RDC and I have an '80s party and not following the subsequent bickering. RDC would have a '70s party instead but without Roxy Music or anything from Zenyatta Mondatta or even The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I showed mine by having no idea whatsoever of the songs that really filled the dance floor later in the evening. I had long since left it, not recognizing Metallica or Iron Maiden (but at least knowing their names when Neal and RDC, respectively, identified them), but I had little desire to return to it when it got really crowded. Crowded and the crowd mouthing the words (or singing; who could tell at that volume) indicate a popular song, and I hadn't the least idea.
But hey, when we left it wasn't at my suggestion.
I drove, that being my duty in the social order. I had heard RDC's story about EJB's having to drive RDC's car one night because even in his ignorance of standard transmission he was safer than RDC, but the bit RDC had never included before was "We tossed a coin to see who would drive and EJB was the only one who could find it." So I was already laughing (at the turn of phrase, not at the DUI) when we passed the hotel window, where we all cracked up because there in the lobby stood one of the dance floor couples, probably asking if they rented rooms by the hour.