I woke up yesterday around 1am, as described an earlier post, but sometime around 7am, after dicking around the web and watching a couple DVDs, I remembered why I took yesterday off in the first place: I had to meet with my probation officer. My mid-afternoon meeting meant that a day full of transportation problems would kill my work schedule, and so I took the day off.

And just to confirm when in the afternoon my meeting was, I inspected the papers. Oh, wow would you look at that. My meeting's at 9am.

Last time I had to go to Simi Valley for the courthouse was a nightmare. I didn't trust the buses yet and so I rode out on my e-bike, draining the whole battery. This meant that I got to the probation department in time, but with no juice left to actually make it home. Unless, of course, I actually pedaled. The problem, though, was that I was still due at work, meaning that I had to ride an eighty-pound bike from Simi in a timely fashion.

This time around, I had planned on taking the buses again, but now because of the tighter schedule, some buses wouldn't be running. Looks like I'm going to have to rely on a taxi. So I call Tom. No go. Then I call TO Cab's main dispatch. Forty minute wait. It's 8am at this point. I call a third company. Same. I call a fourth. They tell me to call TO Cab. I explain that they couldn't do it, and after a little bit of wrangling, they arranged for a driver to pick me up.

His name was Errol. I knew instantly that it would be a good day. In fact, my meeting went off without a hitch. There was a slightly awkward moment when I had to explain to my PO why I wanted to move to Old Pas, but I think she recognized it as a hip and trendy place. I'm hoping she doesn't think it's because of all the bars. Because Moose and Q's are a terrible reason to move. But by 9:15, I was out of there, boarding a bus en route to Pasadena where I would loiter for the afternoon. And my day in Pasadena will have to comprise another post, so let me finish off with a snippet of the conversation I shared with Errol the Cab Driver.

Ron [passing another gated community]: Money can't buy love, but it can buy security.
Errol: Money can buy a reasonable facsimile of love.
Ron [silent for a moment]: You know, a reasonable facsimile of love might be what everyone ends up with anyway.

To Pasadena!