MIDVALE SUMMIT, 3,326 feet. Blue Mountain Pass, 5,293 feet. Paradise Hill, 4,907 feet. –... By the time we crested Donner Pass my cold-congested head felt like a sealed bag of potato chips under the back seat of a fighter plane. My nose was stuffed. Both ears were plugged and would not pop. But maybe that was for the best; if they had, we'd still be cleaning potato chips out of the car.

This ever happen to you? Usually, you know, it's no problem. You open your mouth real wide, bonk yourself on the side of the head, chew on some wax lips, yawn a lot. And something clicks, or pops, or at any rate happens. In this case, however ... no deal. Nothing, not even Talk of the Nation on NPR, would do the trick – maybe because I couldn't hear it.

Crawdad, who was driving, suggested I drink lots of water. This seemed reasonable. I'm a firm believer in drinking lots of water as a sort of cure-all for incurable conditions. Hiccups. Common cold. Potato chip-bag head ... Why not?

Because our half-full water bottle was puckered up like a punch in the gut – a fairly accurate representation of the atmospheric conditions inside my head – and opening it was like opening the window on an airplane. Stuff flying all over the place ... hats, sandwich wrappers, CDs, suitcases. Crawdad almost crashed into a camper full of kids.

When the air pressure returned to more-or-less normal and Crawdad regained control of the vehicle, I guzzled the water and began to wait patiently for results – the first (and last) of which was that I had to pee.

That happened, finally, somewhere around Grass Valley. And while I was wobbling to the men's room, Crawdad got me a packet of Sudafeds and 10 pieces of Bazooka Joe bubble gum. Which didn't do a lick of good and didn't do a lick of good but at least I got to read 10 incredibly stupid comics, respectively.

Well, these kinds of inner-head conditions, like life and the flavor of Bazooka Joe bubble gum, can't go on forever. They can take you clear to Noe Valley, though, and dinner. And do you know how I finally blew my brains out, so to speak?

You do know, don't you.

Wasabi.

I'd started thinking about it around Fairfield, and Crawdad, for reasons of her own, was thinking the exact same thing. We'd just spent a four-day getaway weekend holed up in Idaho with steak, steak, goose, and game hens, and Crawdad was craving health food, which for her means sushi.

So we dropped our stuff and our car off at home and hoofed it to Castro and 24th. Hamano Sushi. Crawdad ate there 10 years ago and loved it. I'd never been. But I had one of those mass-mailed neighborhood coupons for a sushi dinner for $9.95, and anyway all I really wanted was wasabi.

Hamano, without a coupon, is not Cheap Eats. Saba, for example, is $3.95, or twice the price Miyabi charges. That, for our purposes, is bullshit. Even if it is great sushi. Which it is. And best of all, you don't need a coupon to get the sushi dinner for $9.95. You just have to get there before seven; it's on the menu as an early-bird special. No substitutions, though. You get a California roll or a spicy tuna roll, and six pieces of chef's choice sushi: ebi, albacore, white fish, tuna, salmon, and one other one that I forgot.

Once the wasabi kicked in and Crawdad and I could understand each other, I traded the spicy tuna roll for two pieces of saba, my favorite, and a piece of yellowtail off of her plate. Before that any communication beyond pointing to things on menus was pretty much impossible. Worst of all, for me, with my head sealed off like that, was the inner annoyance of my own voice.

We were celebrating our fifth anniversary, which might even have been a romantic occasion except that, for the most part, our conversation consisted of her screaming, "I can't hear you" and me whispering, "I can't hear you, either."

I kept adding wasabi to my dipping bowl. I think this might have been the first time ever that I out-wasabied my ever-loving asbestos-tongued wife. I was shaking and shuddering and weeping, red-faced and cheeks puffed out until, just like I'd imagined it, just like in cartoons ...

Hamano Sushi. 1332 Castro (at 24th Street), S.F. (415) 826-0825. Lunch: Tues.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-2:45 p.m. Dinner: Tues.-Sat., 5-10 p.m.; Sun.-Mon., 5-9:30 p.m. Takeout available. Beer and wine. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.