It turns out that while the whole "law against pets in apartment building" angle the security guard was trying to feed us was absolute crap. There was a vote by the residents of this apartment. It either took place before we arrived, or after we moved in but were in the United States. They voted to ban pets (or perhaps dogs) in the building. This doesn’t stop anyone really from owning one, but it makes keeping our dog more of a headache. One of the security guards actually was like, "Well, you’ll be getting rid of it if you want to live here."
Uh, no, we won’t.
Security guards must deal with complaints all the time. I know there is a dog that barks constantly in the building. It’s not our dog, and if we didn’t take Yoshi out for walks like responsible people should, no one would even know there was a dog in the apartment at all. I can understand the fact that one barking dog pisses people off and makes all the dog owners look bad. Yoshi is part of the family now, so we can’t exactly "give him up". He’s not going anywhere.
My wife started on the campaign of bribery and placation that works on all security guards. She gave the guy on duty a helping of our watermelon to see if it would quell some of his anger when we took Yoshi out later. We’ll bribe him with some fruit, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll start taking pictures of them when they are asleep on duty. We’ll take care of this problem.
Anyway, we needed a few more items now that we’ve settled into our new place. The nearest superstore that isn’t Wal-Mart requires that we take an pedestrian overpass at least once, and it’s far enough that riding a bike cuts down the time considerably. We got ready for our trip, attacked the walkway ramps on our bikes, and headed over to do some shopping. We got through the madhouse in the store, secured our goodies, and even had an ice cream shake to cool down. Then a bolt of that special kind of summer lightning hit and the thunder boomed. We had two bikes, lots of stuff, and a small window of sunshine on the bridge we came from. We rode out just as the storm started dropping fat rain drops at the bike stand, and as we headed out we were riding on the edge of the storm. The cars that passed us were soaked like they had just been washed, and the cars in front of us were still dried. We rode like maniacs to keep from getting soaked.
As we crossed over the bridge, a man in a stroller was coming up the ramp as I got ready to descend. I had to wait, the rain approached, and I looked at my arm, which I am under doctors orders not to get wet to prevent yet another trip under the laser. The man had no umbrella, and I told him that the rain was coming in the direction he was heading. As my wife approached, he complimented me to her, telling her I had excellent Korean. Whatever man, get off the ramp and spare us getting wet.
We beat the storm back, but not by much. By the time we were locking our bikes back up, the storm was in full effect over our apartment. Our calm, cool dog, Yoshi, who used to be afraid of thunder, was waiting for us to come back, wagging his tail and being quiet like we told him.
