Cosima Underwater

continued from here

The pirate and beanstalk made a quick stop at the real Chinatown in San Francisco, to stock up on steamed buns and egg tarts before making a quick getaway in their Bonnie-and-Clyde car.

Luckily, the pirate drove. Beanstalk is better at looking out the window. The landscape changed dramatically as they left town and climbed up and over the hills. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were riding by, attacking windmills and later fighting huge armies of fruit trees. Cherry, peach, almond, olive, and orange trees stood in file along the highway, intersected by deep blue water channels.

So that’s where California oranges come from! The beanstalk half closed her eyes and the rows of trees flickered by and began to dance.

The pirate had forewarned her. People living outside of Fresno like to make jokes about the town. Real tough to be located between San Francisco and Los Angeles and not even have a beach. And something very strange happened to downtown. Aliens came and sucked up every third building, leaving empty, dusty lots. As a small thank you, they left the locals their abandoned spaceship. It is now used as city hall. The beanstalk liked it though. There was an alien invasion all over earth during the 1980s. Her own hometown also has a Battlestar Galactica, and it doesn’t look half as pretty as Fresno’s.

Downtown looks a bit empty, and that’s probably because all the cool people live, work and play in the Tower District, where the Malay pirate has his den.

In front of the den, a beautiful dove waited for the beanstalk, and she could hardly wait to fly with her. Riding a bicycle is a really lovely way to come to know a neighborhood, just the right speed to look around and take it all in. The historic gas station at the corner, street upon street of pretty old houses, trees forming a roof over the street, stunning art deco buildings, wild flowers in front yards. It was wonderful to get lost among all that.

So that was a post entirely without pictures. I promise to make up for it next time, when I will post many pictures of beautiful Fresnian princesses and … dwarfs… lol

And I hope all the pictures I uploaded to my photo site the day before yesterday will magically reappear. They seem to have vanished into cyber space.