So I'm heading for a podiatrist. I wake up in the morning, get out of bed and hobble (and I mean hobble) to the bathroom. A hot bath and a short walk and the feet are OK in the sense of useable. Walking, the soreness goes away or mostly goes away, so it doesn't slow me down so much, but sit for a while and the heels and the arches ache. The lower leg muscles ache. Growing old? (We're big on the growing old question in my house.) Bad shoes? Something else? So, anyway, to a podiatrist. A street photographer's gotta walk, right? These things aren't serious, right? Just stuff that happens in your late fifties. Right?

Maybe the reason for starting this with sore feet - and I just start, you know, as in wing it - is the fact I'm sitting here on Saturday morning thinking of getting on a bus and going downtown to shoot the Chinese community street fair this weekend, an annual event here in Oakland, and the thought of the walking combined with the current cool weather scrambled with the fact I've had no photographic luck with this fair in the past gives me pause.

Later. Yes, of course, I went. It's ten minutes by bus and I rode on down and walked through the crowds, listened to the live music and avoided eating any of the various barbecued meat on a stick combinations. The right foot loosened up, but it kept me aware of its presence. No thoughts of doing any wind sprints. Took a shooting jacket, a camera and a second lens stuffed in a pocket and left the camera bag behind. No need to tempt fate. No need to be foolish.

Shot maybe a roll, can't remember a single exciting image, although I found an exposed roll mixed in with the rest of the film in my pocket that's been there, I'm guessing, since Portland. I'm hoping it's one I shot at the family party near Seattle. Could be anything. Could be those rumored almost imagined photos taken and then lost, some thought forever, of the Princess and the Proprietor when they lived in the lands beyond the mountains when his feet didn't hurt and his mind was closer to whole.