I've been reluctant to post much about my own experiences. After all, what I've been trained to do is write about other people. Other people's ideas. Other people's experiences.

They are still much more compelling than my own. But let me tell you...

I worked on two obituaries today, of two women killed by oil.

After a life of traveling between the world's two largest democracies, Anahita Mehta immigrated to the United States from India for good in 2002 to work for Google in their testing department. She was then 26 years old, done with graduate school and an entry-level job Bangalore in which everyone appreciated the institutional name on her degree and no one appreciated her mind, least of all her (male) boss. At least, that's what her brother,  who lives in Concord, told me. Aside from a yen for software, Anahita also had cultural ideas, about new music and love and the power of expanding your mind with psychoactive drugs. She was a perfect fit for the Bay Area, except for her fear of driving. With her fat Google salary, she bought a Lexus SUV. She had a crowd of 10 or so friends and she was generally the ride.

She was gassing up her car at the San Mateo AM/PM station near the intersection of the 101 and the 92 when the flash mob came. It was a pretty daring mob. That gas station is a block from the police station. I had finished pulling the daily arrest log at 3:55 and was walking to my bike so I could catch Caltrain  when the crowd of around 50 people came, on bikes, down Delaware Avenue with their protest signs. I felt pretty lucky, even though I didn't have a camera, because hey, who falls into news like a flash protest? Eyewitness, baby. I started walking north on Delaware. 

They pulled into the AM/PM station and, well, you know how that gas station is, cheapest on the Bayshore throughways. Within about thirty seconds there were 10 cars backed up the off-ramp from the 92, people honking to get in, people honking to get out. There were two guys, skinny, wearing ski masks, one white, one I couldn't tell, and they started dragging people out of their cars while the others broke windshields. Anahita had the biggest car, and she was really fast. She jumped in, must have slammed the power locks - a guy grabbed the handle and just tugged. So one of the guys in the masks, couldn't see which, pulls a gun and points it at the windshield. The SUV revs. He fires. It stops, and then this horn starts, like the siren everyone's been waiting for. The bikers peel off.

You've seen the rest on TV, I'm sure. How the cops arrested 27 people with bikes, killed two others, are pressing charges for murder. What did I do, you may wonder?

I had been standing there frozen ever since the violence started. Just frozen. I remember, once, on a hike, watching my friend hiking in front of me, and laces from one of her hiking boots catch on the other. She pitched forward, and she broke her arm. It seemed so slow, in recollection. But in the moment, it seemed so fast, and there was nothing I could do. They brought in a shrink to talk to me at work, and that's what she said - nothing. I'm sticking with it.

When the horn started wailing I started running back to the police station, but the officers were already running out the door, sprinting past me. So I stopped, and squatted behind one of those cement planters, and started writing everything down. The cops hadn't thought about me too much yet, because otherwise they would have dragged me inside. I finally woke up and realized that if I was going to find out anything about that woman in the car, I'd need to get her license plate and see what I could come up with. I can't pull data that way, you know, but there are people who can. I ducked out and they hadn't moved the SUV yet,  though a few officers were taping it off. I got down the number before they saw me, and I called it in to a friend of mine. That was how I found out Anahita was Anahita.

She didn't have a Myspace page. But she was a pretty loyal employee. Can you believe she was on orkut?

The cops noticed that I was standing there and one of the young guys, didn't know him, came over and told me they'd have to take a statement, same as all the people who'd been gasing their cars. They asked me if I'd gotten it on film. I hadn't, but I'll tell you something. This wasn't a political protest. I'd have given them the damn pictures. 

Joe took my statement. He's always been a decent guy.

Jesus, you know something? It makes me tired just to talk about this.

I stayed around for a while, hoping for updates or a chance to interview the other people from the gas station. My editor called and told me just to come back, so we could do it over the phone and start researching the victim.  The cops wouldn't let me leave without an escort, so they drove me and my bike to the station and waited with me in the parking lot. They had barricaded the area so they were the only cars on the road, four or five cruisers swooping around at a time, like packs of meter maids on steroids. We passed one incident in progress, meaning that there were cops out of a car with 6 guns trained to a guy on dropping his bike and raising his hands. I didn't recognize him and I said so. They said they'd be bringing me back for a bunch of lineups. I guess that's tomorrow, because its 11:40 and they haven't called me yet.

I don't have a laptop, so I just wrote down more notes and more questions while I was riding up to San Francisco. Got out at Fourth and King. Biked to the office. Nothing seems as ridiculously anticlimactic as biking back to the office on a sunny, clear afternoon after something like that.

My buddy Eric helped me out with the research. We found out a fair bit on the Web, actually, including how to contact her cousin. We waited, though. I wasn't going to try to reach him before the coroner called.

Sometimes people really curse you out when you make the vulture call. Sometimes, though, they are happy to talk to you, because if  you are a journalist you must have infinite patience to listen to other people's stories, and not interject with "you know, it's too hard for me to listen" or "she's in a better place." And they want everybody to know about how wonderful the dead person is, and talking to you is a good way for that to happen. I also had an advantage, talking to Chris - I'd seen Anahita's last stand, and she was brave, and I was in a position to say so. We were both in shock, I think.

After I hang up the phone with him, Shawn called me. You remember Shawn, the grocery delivery guy in Richmond? Turned out I spelled his name wrong. That wasn't why he was calling. He was calling because his grandmother in Rodeo had answered the door, and some security guards from the Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery were there to give her some fliers. But it scared the bejeezus out of her, and she had a heart attack. She died. She was 86 years old, and had been a public school teacher in Richmond for 40 years when she retired. I never met her, either. Shawn said she played the piano real well.

I took more notes. Then I told Shawn what happened and passed him off to Becca because there was no way I could write both stories. I wrote my story. We did the editing. I talked to the shrink. I came home. Mr_Spiteful, despite his name, is a wonderful man and he made me an omelette.

Now I'm here. My cat is trying to sit on the keyboard. I hope tomorrow is nothing like today.