There is a head count every hour on the hour, mandated by the state (you can tell the guards, ahem, supervising officers, aren't doing it for fun), and they announce them over the PA system until 11pm lockdown and lightsout. However, they continue all through the night in silence as the officers peek into each room during head count to make sure the inmates are still in bed. The announcements resume at 5am, and this has become my alarm clock and my snooze. When you share one bathroom with 8 other people (Room 224 was Five Deep until the Rat got rolled up, but they picked up a new guy whose name is Blaze. I'm not making this up) , you have to stagger each other's usage of the single toilet and single shower stall. I've been taking my showers at night to avoid the morning crowd, but at 6am, there's still about 4 people who are up and about. I'll take a quick leak between two shower-takers, and just resign myself to brushing my teeth at work. But all in all, my morning consists of getting rattled into consciousness by a PA, and then sitting on bunk and folding my blanket (and wiping away the eye-boogers) until an officer comes in for my room's head count. Until I get counted, my day doesn't really begin. I bound out of bed and quickly change; the process takes all of five minutes. By 6:25, I'm out the door.

I've told that story before, but when you live a life of constant routine, the days just blend together. For example, I've been in custody for 30 days now, and I am eligible for a goddamn haircut. The next time you see me, expect me to be bald.

Today, I'm about to hop onto my bike when I note that it suffered a flat tire over night. It was fine when I locked it up last night, so I must have struck something that induced a slow leak. Either way, I'm probably going to need another tube if I can't get this one repaired. Fortunately, there's an army of bicycles, and I take one of the "public" bikes to take me to the Las Posas Park-N-Ride.

All in all, a different but mundane morning, highlighted so far only by me waiting at a traffic light on Pleasant Valley Road. Peering off in the distance, I could see the Conejo Grade awash with the twinkling headlights of morning commuters; illuminated, it looks like the constellation Scorpio transfixed onto the mountain. Being here sure beats a five month tour in Iraq, or worse, in Riverside.