Thai Temple, Alameda Biking, and No Traveling

I woke up once again wanting to travel, despite my feelings to the contrary after the wonderful day yesterday. Hence, I spent some time researching places to go, finding things to do, and locating plane ticket fares and comparing them against going in a few weeks. By the end of the morning, I'd convinced myself that there was no cost advantage to waiting and I should have lunch, go biking, and when I return in the evening I should book my plane tickets for tomorrow.

For lunch, I biked once again the short 1.5 miles to the Thai Temple. Despite being overcast, it was even more packed than usual, probably due to the holiday weekend. I grabbed a three item combo:
* Panang curry (with beef). Quite good.
* Pad thai (with chicken and tofu). Okay. I swear I tasted ketchup or at least something else that made it sweeter than it should be. And where were the peanuts?
* Stir-fry of chicken thigh meat, baby corn, and a few other vegetables. Decent. The ingredients made it feel very Chinese, and the taste didn't contradict that.

After lunch, I figured biking around in the sun and exploring a new place would fulfill my desire for travel. Hence, I decided to bike around Alameda. The pictures and accompanying commentary document this exploration. Check it out; I ran into some neat things. Throughout, I was repeatedly ambivalent about traveling. Exploring was nice but didn't feel revolutionary or eye-opening. If traveling elsewhere would be only as good as this Alameda trip, why bother? On the other hand, if I can only get only this quantity of excitement from local traveling, why stay here? By the time I got home, I slightly leaning toward traveling. Why not?

After returning home, I headed toward a local bookstore to pick up a travel guide to my intended travel destination. I figured I should pick one up to read on the plane tomorrow. But they didn't have any. I took this as a sign from fate that I shouldn't go.

But I'd somewhat forgotten this sign from fate by the time I got home. And although I was quite tired from being in the sun so long and biking so much (24 miles or so) and didn't really feel as if I had the energy to book plane tickets, I tried to convince myself to do so anyway.

Before beginning that process, I had to start laundry. I'd done a bit of laundry the previous night but still didn't have enough clean clothes to go on a trip. Yet, when I went to start my laundry, the machine had a pizza box on it with a label that said it was broken and not to use it. I'm still amazed the machine broke within the last twenty-four hours. But, this was yet another sign I shouldn't go traveling this holiday. A third and final one. Now I'm convinced, and will put this foolish notion out of my mind for a time.