ONE OF MY new hobbies is being pulled over by the police. In my youth, in my manhood, when I drove like a maniac, police scared the merde out of me – if you'll pardon the poetry – and I avoided them at all costs. Now that I drive like a little old lady, I find that I kind of enjoy their company. Not doing anything wrong, and knowing it, is key.

Finally, in my 40s, I've gotten the hang of Stop on the Red, Go on the Green, Don't Mess with Mr. In-Between. I get it now. STOP, the word, on the red octagonal stop signs, that means stop, the concept. All the way. I get it.

And there's never any question of speeding. One reason I bought my old three-cylinder Chevy Sprint pickup – besides the obvious reason: that it gets better gas mileage than most hybrids – is because it's virtually impossible to go any faster than the speed limit. If it's not all downhill, in fact, it's often virtually impossible to go where you're going, period.

Which, in addition to saving even more gas, doesn't overly concern me since I'm generally not going anywhere anyway. By way of illustrating this highly philosophical point: although I drive back and forth between San Francisco and Occidental two or three times a week, I'm still not quite clear on whether I live in the city and commute to the country, or vice versa. I'm a chicken farmer. I'm a restaurant reviewer. I make steel drums at the beaches up there, play them in bars down here. Most of what I could actually honestly call "work" gets done in the car, in-between.

I'm writing this review in my head, talking to myself. Out loud, so I can hear how it sounds. Or I'm working out the tune to a new song on my tissue comb harmonica. And, like anyone else hard at work being a productive member of society, I welcome any and all interruptions, such as lunch, engine failure, or the police pulling me over.

What their angle is on all this I can only guess. Well, my car looks about as suspicious as I do. The reason I call it my Chevy Sprint pickup truck, when really of course such a thing does not occur in nature, is because the back seats are always folded down and I'm always hauling something pickup truckish, like a 55-gallon oil drum, a bale of straw, a load of wood, 50-pound burlap sacks of cracked corn, garbage. An empty propane tank.

Last time I got pulled over there was either a dead chicken in a bag, a load of laundry, or maybe I just smelled that bad myself ... in any case, the window was down and hay and straw and sawdust was swirling so dervishly behind me that I didn't see the lights flashing in my rearview mirror. He had to use the siren.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"Because I'm a menace to society?"

My tags are expired. My registration is current, but the DMV never gave me new stickers for the license plate. I asked them while I was doing the transfer and they said I didn't need them. So ...

I get to meet a lot more cops than I used to.

Something to write about.

Other day I'm coming down Ninth Street between Harrison and Folsom when I notice a cop car cruising behind me, no lights. I never even try to act casual anymore. I just pull over. I'd already gotten together my registration, license, and proof of insurance before I realized he wasn't there. Instead of looking out my window at his crotch, I was looking at a sign on a restaurant window that said, "Lunch special: steak with fries, $8.95."

It was the Soma Diner, a divey, inconspicuous breakfast and lunch joint associated somehow with the Best Western Civic Center Motor Inn. I sat against the wall on a long bench seat, elbows into a delightfully hideous galactic dot-matrix table splotch top, staring across the room at a wall full of light blue box cabinets filled with pastel cups and saucers, boxes of raisin bran, Special K, and Honey Bunches of Oats.

White-and-blue striped blinds, fluorescent overhead lights, ugly ceiling fans, weirdo wallpaper, plastic wreaths in the windows, plastic flowers hanging from the ceiling, paintings of flowers on the wall. I don't know that I ever felt more at home.

Until my steak came and it was a steak sandwich, with mayonnaise. My mistake. I double-checked on the way out and the sign did say sandwich. Anyway, it was one of those rare cases where the mayo hadn't touched the meat, lucky me, and equally rare, it was rare! It's like stop meaning stop. When rare means rare, all is well.

Soma Diner. 362 Ninth St. (at Harrison), S.F. (415) 701-1916. Mon.-Sat., 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sun., 6:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Takeout available. No alcohol. American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.

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Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).