A helluva day

I’m having a helluva day.

So pleased to be out on my bike at last with the new handlebars and a good tailwind, up Sixth Avenue to the lafayette bakery for home-made brioche, then up Greenwich Avenue to 13th Street health food stores to investigate purchase of local pollen (which my friend Cat thinks would be helpful against allergies - but whoever heard of Manhattan honeybees?), and they suggested the free market at Union Square, but sold me some healthy (and pricy) pills. I figure it must have happened then or slightly later, because I know I had my keys when I unlocked the bike at 13th and Greenwich. I went up Eighth to 18th, hummed across to Union Square, no market on Thursdays, hummed down Broadway to hit Radio Shack about a white noise machine, and only when I dismounted at 9th did I realize that I no longer had my enormous bunch of keys.

Their only identifying mark: A silver tag with the initials S.B.Y. (My late father.)

Somehow I managed to retrace my steps (or rather tracks), keeping an eye on the ground, as I do anyway looking out for potholes. I blame the fact that I was wearing gray corduroy jeans instead of blue jeans. Luckily I had i.d. on me. Went to a locksmith on Carmine Street. He wasn't even Israeli. Luckily I'd only locked one lock. Still: it cost me $226 getting into my apartment, where I had a spare thingie for the front door and spare keys for the bike lock and the lower door lock. I don't think I have copies for the three locks on the Gulag. I assume the facility there can just clip them. But further expenses lie ahead, methinks.

I ate all three brioche with a cup of tea and went to sleep. That was at six.

Does this put things in perspective? It does not.

I kept thinking: At least this hasn't happened to me in the last thirty years. (That I remember.) Some people it probably happens all the time.

I wonder if someone on Craigslist or someplace (where?) will advertise a key chain FULL of keys with the tag S.B.Y.?