I did go back through some of the earlier years looking for specific images and realized what condition I'd been in for some of these recent parades, you can see it in the lower number of photographs taken, either the result of an operation I'd had or some other off the wall malady, but this year's event went well. I say I was physically tired, but physically tired after four straight hours of running around, nothing too surprising about that, recovered in good order. So something for me to remember. One reason I seem to have gotten so many reasonable images, maybe, was I shot almost twice the number of photographs I've gotten in the recent past. Makes a difference.

Now back from breakfast and a run by the supermarket for something other than cat food. I still check for her lying on the bed when I enter the bedroom, but that will fade in another, oh, year or so. She'll have another cat to take her place by then, just not now. Not for a while.

So I'll trip over my feet again by saying I'm feeling pretty good. For whatever sleep I got last night, awakening at five-thirty and unable to get back to sleep, the day is certainly starting well, although it looks like it's going to be a scorcher. I'm no fan of scorchers. But fine. I'll wear a t-shirt on the street, a wide brimmed hat for the sun, a camera in hand. But then there's always a camera in hand, isn't there, camera geek that I appear to have become.

Later. Another four hours working on the Dykes On Bikes photographs, finishing them finally, happy with them at the beginning, frustrated with them at the end. Such is the way of this stuff, I guess, putting them in perspective. I'll look again in another week, see how my eye reacts. There's something like ninety photographs in the four sections, more than I was expecting. It's afternoon, finally, need to get outside and stretch a bit.

Later still. An email waiting when I got back from my walk from Mr. B asking me to call. OK. There's usually only one reason an old friend from the past sends such a message, so I called. It seems Ms. K, a long time mutual friend, an old girl friend of mine from those first magic days in San Francisco, has died. She evidently learned recently she had stomach cancer and the end came quickly. Mr. B suggested we raise a glass to Ms. K, wherever we are, whomever we're with, this Fourth of July. The Fourth of July. Independence. Freedom. That was Ms. K, a life lived full tilt in her own way, on her own terms. So I will. Raise that glass. Maybe join her in memory for one or two this evening too. I don't have any Red Mountain for old times sake, Susan. I hope this small bottle of sake will do.