3:33

It wasn't till 3:33 p.m. that I set out for the Viewpoint today, on what had been a sunny, warmish day. But the moment I went out the door, the sun vanished. I was full of regrets as I made my way to the Viewpoint, but when I arrived, I was pleasantly surprised by a spectacular light show over the bay. Although there were even fewer leaves left on the Sentinel today than yesterday, down below, there was still plenty of brilliant fall foliage. There were several white sailboats moving about, punctuating the otherwise gray, blue-gray, yellow, red, green, orange and brown landscape.

I had two conversations. The first was with a couple. The woman wore red, the man beige. I told them it never seemed quite sure-fire to remember how to change one's clock at this time of year by means of the saying "Fall back, spring forward. I always wonder what's wrong with springing back or falling forward. It seems to me that both springing and falling can actually be done in either a forwards or backwards direction. The woman laughed and said, "Don't confuse me; it's taken me till now to get it straight." I think she was in her fifties or sixties. The other person I spoke with was a man who was walking from his car, a paper cup in hand, headed for the bench at the north end of the Viewpoint. The cup bore the logo of a well-known Seattle-based coffee company. I asked him whether he was drinking coffee or hot cocoa. He said, "Coffee." I said, "Decaf or regular?" He said, "It's got a little caffeine in it," just as he was sitting down on the bench. Then he said, "After all these years..." and hesitated for a second. I said, "...you deserve it?" He said, "No--it won't have much of an effect on me."