PARIS, Friday May 19 –

It is cool and it could rain, and the predicted wind is hauling up from the southwest, giving blasts to the rippling awnings. In another month the 10 pm launch of the Friday night Roller Rando will happen just before sundown but tonight it's gone long ago and the yellow lights overhead are making everything look like we are the omelet people.

There's a big crowd though, stalled in the darkness of the place in front of the train station. Another crowd has gathered to watch the crazies, I guess, with affection. You can be going to a joint in Montparnasse and on the way pause for a couple of minutes and witness a big gang of people on wheels take off for a roll around town. They all clear out in less than 10 minutes and then you take your date's arm and steer her to a comfortable banquette in the Coupole or some rustic dive like Smoke.

When they go off they get stuck with the stop light at Edgar, and the backup fills all the street back to the station. For a while it looks like the monitors in the yellow shirts have decided to have a good gab resting on their wheels while everybody wonders what the holdup is but the light goes green and I see the flash of helmets swinging into the turn to go up Edgar, going I guess, over to Raspail while most everybody else goes down to the gaudy lights on the boulevard.

I forgot the camera. I wired it up the Internet and loaded some updated software into it. I haven't done what I need to do, which is push it back to its default settings so that I can start over and reset it. Across from the rollers I see that I can't get its ISO light sensitivity to go higher than 400. The first shot off went at 200 and the shutter closed and stayed closed and I thought it died. But it was just slow. The damn screen in back keeps lighting up with its phony little picture, and I don't know how to turn it off. It keeps freaking me out. Okay, I got it set on 400. With the f-stop wound down to 5.6 and the speed showing is 4. Four what? It is slow but faster than the first shot. Nothing is going to come of this. But digital is nothing but cheap so I shoot some more.