Asshole Dog, Sit Up Guy, Jumper Dude...

For hours a day, the world is defined by the frame of the workshop windows. They look out over the back parking lot.

We call the desk where we take turns eating lunch the Bayview Cafe.

This was the view yesterday afternoon. You could get a clearer shot of the actual scenery and dramatic light by going down into the parking lot to avoid the clutter of window dirt and power lines, but this shot illustrates the view through the actual windows: what we can see without stopping what we're doing.

One day, a hawk landed on the trash hut.

I don't have a camera with a long lens anymore. But you can see it if you click on the picture.

The parking lot also serves the very popular Full Belli Deli. During a busy lunch service, cars might fill the lot, with some double parked in the center, and more circling. It's an overflowing buffet of people watching.

Asshole Dog is a magnificent German shepherd, who rides in his owner's truck. He likes to explode in ferocious barking if anyone walks within 20 feet. When the lot is crowded, unsuspecting walkers come into range quickly. Almost invariably, they are too cool to flinch or jump when the dog's muzzle thrusts out the gap at the top of the window.

Sit Up Guy does not show up every day. He looks like an aging athlete, perhaps a coach now, of something that involves cleats and slamming into each other. He goes in, orders his sandwich, and then comes back out to do crunches on the ground next to his car.

Jumper Dude isn't a deli customer, but he will occasionally flash through during lunch rush to launch his bike off the bank at the edge of the lot.

The route goes just to the left of the tree. Jumper Dude was a mountain biking instructor. His age is indeterminate. He tells many tales of good and bad landings. He's graying, but still lean and fast. For a long time we did not know who he was. We just saw him on the part of his lunch time route that came through our field of view. His skills speak for themselves. He has since become a customer, with an actual name, but Jumper Dude will always be his middle name and shorthand designator. We should probably tell him that.

One afternoon we saw Assault Weapon Kid. A nondescript car pulled in during a not-too-busy time. The first person out was a teenage boy wearing some sort of tactical gear and carrying an assault rifle. I had a moment to wonder if we were going to be on the evening news, but the next people out of the car were a dad-like adult and a younger kid. Everybody went trooping off stage left. We heard no shots or screams. Just another day. Assault Weapon Kid has never reappeared. The weapon itself was probably a super-realistic paintball gun, or they could have just come back from a fun morning at the range.

A guy we dubbed Go Kart Dude was showing up at lunch time almost every day this summer. Last we checked, go karts weren't street legal, but somehow he never got bagged. Of course we don't know whether he has now vanished because of the cooler weather, a seasonal change of residence, or an arrest.

Sometimes the parking lot characters' fame precedes them. Mitt Romney appears to have picked up lunch at the deli on Monday or Tuesday. Back before he was Somebody, Jimmy Fallon used to show up fairly regularly out there during summer visits to his future in-laws. Since we're pretty unhip, other celebs could pass right under our noses unrecognized, but Wolfeboro isn't the magnet for them that it used to be. And then there are the titans of finance and industry whose names are not familiar, who each, from time to time -- sometimes quite a few times -- home in on the beacon of the Full Belli Deli.

Even at our height of popularity, our shop was never a celebrity magnet. At best, one might occasionally drift through so they can say they left no stone unturned. When finished, though, they drop it back on top of us, curiosity satisfied. And I think they tell their friends not to bother.

No hard feelings. People are into what they're into.

The exception is Estelle Parsons, who usually needs us at least once a summer for some sort of bike issue. She and her husband fall into the category of regular customer, since they have a summer home on the lake, and spend at least a couple of weeks there.  They have a couple of hybrids. Before that she had a sweet little European mixte from the 1970s. Nothing super exotic, but a nice example of mid-grade riding stock of the period. In her case, her occupation is incidental. She's a born and raised New Englander. More of a native species than a visiting exotic.

I often wonder how people with multiple homes decide to allocate their time among them. I know the Mittster has several. I would always be stressed, trying to make sure that I got enough use out of a place to justify possession. But I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about stupid shit like fairness and the greater good. Life is actually just a fight to the death, which may be more or less active at any given time. May your luck always hold.

Lunch Interrupted

In a small retail store lunch is taken when the opportunity presents itself.

The most interesting lunch interruption I ever experienced came after a long series of failed attempts to get some time alone with my sandwich when I worked in a small outdoor outfitter store in Annapolis, Maryland. One after another, annoying people came in with questions that did not lead to sales or to interesting conversations. At last, they seemed to have finished with me. I sat on a stool behind the front counter, my back to the front window and the door and raised the sandwich to my lips. Immediately I heard the clang of the door chime and turned to see a slightly unkempt individual who looked like he could be crazy. He pointed over my shoulder out the window.

"Look, it's the space shuttle," he said.

That's it. He was definitely crazy. Then I turned to look and there was the space shuttle, flying low and slow over the old Parole shopping plaza on the back of its 747 transport plane.

Today's interruption was not that interesting. You can't beat something as weird as the space shuttle, but I have also gotten harder to wow over the years.

We have a pact here at the shop that whoever is eating should have the best chance to finish doing so  before some annoying bumbledub gets to lurch in and demand attention. That being said, a lot of the time I'll be trying to python down my sandwich and everyone out on the sales floor will apparently be abducted by aliens or something. I'll hear the tentative, "hellooooo...!" from the workshop door while I'm sitting a the lunch desk we call the Bayview Cafe.

I'm really good at pretending I can't hear people. It's even better when they can't see me, but not necessary. So when someone came up the back stairs right after I sat down I didn't even twitch when he said loudly, "ANYBODY AROUND IN THE BIKE SHOP?" Let the guy who had just finished lunch take care of it.

He spotted the boss at the front register. The sound of his voice receded. Then the sound of both of them grew louder as they came back.

"...my son is building bamboo frames in the Philippines. I was wondering if your customers would be interested in anything like that," he was saying. He told a little more about the origins of the company and stated that he thought there were only a couple of other players in the business, "one in California that builds them in Africa and another one in the Philippines."

I could think of Calfee and Panda right off the top of my head. I was pretty sure Calfee was the one doing the bit in Africa. I didn't think either one was in the Philippines. A quick Google search on bamboo bicycles yields plenty of leads to follow to other companies well before getting to his son's. But I don't enjoy blowing people out of the water the way I used to. Besides, Bambike seems like a great little company with a nice philosophy.

The frame was surprisingly heavy. Calfee's site said they engineer the frame to rider weight, so perhaps this one was for someone fairly substantial. Bam is a different company, but the same design principle could apply. I don't know if we could move any here, but as interruptions to my lunch go it was a lot better than a stinky pair of hockey skates, even if it wasn't the space shuttle.