What does this say to you?

I was driving along with Jason, when we pulled up behind this car.

I'm trying to bring attention to the oh-so-classy sticker in the rear window here. The pink letters on the driver's side.

This sparked a small discussion on how we would feel driving a car with that sticker in the back window, and what kind of person would be alright with this.

We made some assumptions about the person driving the car, and I think they were probably accurate. Very young, single mother. The carseat in the back took care of the M, but the rest of the statement and the assumptions we had to verify in a very scientific way--we pulled up alongside her car. I'm not going to comment on the other three letters on the window, but I can definitely confirm the young assumption and the single assumption. Unless she wasn't wearing her wedding ring (which is unlikely, since it seems that most young married women wouldn't be caught dead without it), she was single.

If you're thinking about putting a sticker like this on your car, please don't.

Trip to Philly

I was just on a trip to Philadelphia, where I had three goals:

• Eat a Philly cheesesteak sandwich,
• see Independence Hall
• and run up the steps of the Art Museum like Rocky.

So here are the stories with my goals. The first one was easy because the hotel and the conference center were right across the street from the Reading Terminal Market and there's all kinds of great food there.
View Larger Map

I had one disappointing food from there, and those were the fries from the cheesesteak place. But there was some Amish ice cream that was so good, it almost made me cry. I also got a cheesesteak sandwich with Cheese Whiz and onions.
It was pretty good.

The second one wasn't hard either because a couple of us walked that direction, looking for a place to eat, but we didn't find anything that caught our fancy, so we kept going and ran into Independence Hall.

No place to eat there, so we turned around to find a restaurant. Goal two done.

The last goal, though, was a test of my desire to follow through. Running up the steps of the art museum like Rocky seemed to be a common goal among the people I traveled with. The trouble was that we all had different times we wanted to do it. I kept putting mine off for various reasons, but the final day of the trip came and a tropical storm brought rain all day. And all day, I was at the conference. As soon as the conference ended, we went to dinner. The rain kept falling, making me wonder just how badly I wanted to run up the now-wet steps of the museum. I mapped it out and decided to walk, since it was only almost 2 miles away and I'm too cheap to take a taxi for 2 miles.

So I set off at 9:30 at night, through Philadelphia, towards the art museum. Fortunately for me, the rain stopped while I walked, but that didn't do anything for drying off the steps up to the museum. I got there, took a deep breath, and took off up the steps. Once I got to the top, I turned around and took a picture of City Hall from the top of the steps.

I made it. But I had to really want it. I don't think I have anything close to the determination and hard work that the Italian Stallion showed, but I did it.

Ben Franklin

I'm not kidding about this. A Ben Franklin impersonator just got a standing ovation at our meeting. Before he even said anything. Does anyone else find that a completely surreal thought? Also, it reminds me of that episode of The Office. If you don't know which one I'm talking about, do yourself a favor and watch that.

I know you can't see him in this picture, but Ben Franklin's just on the other side of that guy right in the middle. He decided to cover Ben Franklin right when I took the picture and I didn't want to take another one. So just use your imagination. I promise he's there.

In Philly

Big jump, I know, but here's the latest in my adventures, so just roll with it. I was on a flight to Philadelphia today, sitting next to a guy who was listening to his iPhone, which he had switched to Airplane Mode. Airplane Mode deactivates all the radio transmission features of the iPhone and makes it a touchscreen iPod.

"So what? That describes pretty much everyone on the planet now," you're thinking. What made this special is that it was a good long while after we started our descent to land. For some reason, the guy across the aisle and up a row decided that this single iPod (which the owner claimed was turned off) was going to create enough interference to crash the plane. Or something, but he was so upset he was practically climbing over the seat, yelling at the guy next to me.

As I watched and kind of listened, I wondered what was a bigger threat to the safety of the airplane and the passengers: one guy with his iPod headphones in or a crazy guy, climbing all over the place, threatening to put the iPod somewhere I hope an iPod has never been? The guy was even yelling about it as we waited for our luggage to show up.

After that, we had to find a way to the hotel, so I suggested the transit authority's train. It was kind of a fun experience and not at all as fast as I'd expected it to be. Nothing completely out of the ordinary happened there, it was just a fun experience.

The Metro in Washington DC

I've invited some of my readers to be guest authors on this blog because soon, they're going on a business trip to Washington DC, where they will undoubtedly ride the Metro to get around. I added them because one of my favorite public transit stories actually happened in Washington DC when I was in high school, and I'm sure they'll have similarly fun experiences.

Here's my story.

We went on a family trip in the summer to Washington DC. My parents had done a little bit of research beforehand by asking around some of their friends who had been there. They learned that the Metro will get you around anywhere you need to go, so we didn't rent a car or anything. Our flight got into Washington, we gathered up our luggage and the next step was to take the Metro to our hotel, so we went outside the airport, looking for the Metro stop. We were walking back and forth, not finding anything promising, when my mom suggested that we go back into the airport and ask someone or get a cab. Then we noticed a guy who looked homeless, walking towards us, chanting "Metrometrometrometrometro metrometrometrometro."

"Hey, I'll ask that guy. I bet he knows where it is," my dad said, feeling like this was the most brilliant idea of the trip so far. My mom, acting as the voice of reason, said, "Don't ask him! He's obviously crazy!"

"Nah," my dad said. "I'll be right back." As he headed towards the metrometrometrometro guy, my mom started muttering something about getting mugged and something about my dad not listening and this was a dumb idea.

"Excuse me," my dad interrupted the guy's mantra. "But could you tell us where the entrance to the Metro station is?"

The guy stopped. He put up his hand and pointed, and then he gave very clear, articulate instructions on how to get to the Metro station in the direction he was pointing. My dad said, "Thank you very much," and walked back to the rest of us while the homeless guy went back to chanting "Metrometrometrometrometrometro."

"There you go," my dad taunted my mom, as we headed off in the direction of the Metro station. "You could have gotten killed," my mom said. "I was pretty sure he'd know where the Metro station was," my dad put in a very practical tone. And we got to the Metro station without any problem, following the homeless guy's directions.

I found out on my last trip to DC that there are people whose job it is to hang out around places heavily trafficked by tourists and point out the easiest way to get to the Metro. And they could be mistaken for someone with more sinister motives. And on my last trip, the guy gave me a map to the Mall, including all the Metro stops, which came in very handy.

And they don't always walk around going "Metrometrometrometrometrometrometro."

Where's the eye soap?

On my way to the bus stop, Jason and were confronted by this sight. One I'd prefer not to have seen. It's nothing so horrific as the guy on the bus in Canada, but unpleasant. It also begs the question: did she not think her frilly shirt would flow in the breeze? And yes, that's her underwear sticking up over the waist of her pants. We had to look at this for blocks. Poor us.

A year without a license

This weekend, I moved so that I don't spend as much time (if any) on the bus. Don't get me wrong, it was fun and interesting, but I could think of so many more things I would rather do with four hours of every day. As a result, I may not have much more to contribute to this blog in the future.
That doesn't mean I won't still have amusing stories of things that happen as I get to deal with interesting people in transportation settings.

Take this weekend for example. We had reserved a U-Haul truck to put our life into and when I went to pick up the truck, the guy was entering my information into the computer and looked at my driver's license. Looked over to me and back to the license. "Do you have one that isn't expired?"

I had no response immediately. Like he thought I just carried around an expired license unless someone was serious, and I'd pull the current one out of my pocket. "Ta da!" I imagined he thought I'd say, flourishing my license with Siegfried and Roy flair.

"Uh, nope. That's the only one I've got. It's expired? Really?"

He handed back my license and it had expired in June of 2007. Good thing I've been taking the bus, because my license expired over a year ago.

While I waited for my wife to come back and get the truck, I looked up the hours of the DMV so that I could get that fixed as quickly as possible. I had to wait until today to renew my license, dreading having to spend time at the DMV, a department universally reviled for its inefficiency and abysmal customer service.

Today, I went to the office, which we had trouble finding because it had moved in the last 7 years. But once we found the entrance to the building, I had prepared myself for a long wait. I had my book, my phone, and I was mentally prepared to spend a lot of time there. I was pleasantly suprised that I only had time to read one page of my book before I got to the information desk, kind of like the concierge of the DMV. He handed me an application, a road rules book to take the written test again, and a number. I got to a place to sit, so that I could fill out the application, when a number I vaguely recognized popped up. "Hey, wait, that's my number!"

I got up to the desk and the guy asked "How are you doing today?"
"Great. I haven't had any time to fill this out, though."
"Well, I've got nothing important to do and we're not that busy today, you've got a desk and a pen, go ahead and do it right here."

It was great. Then I got a number, took the test (open-book with a touchscreen computer that scores the test immediately after you finish), I passed, and then I had to wait for them to call my name and take my picture. Waiting for my picture was the longest I had to wait and even that was only a few minutes. It was impressive. Other than the fact that I had to go in to get a new license, my experience at the DMV was pretty good. And now I can get a U-Haul truck. But I don't think I'll need one for a while.

I'm not five

So this month, I didn't buy a monthly bus pass, since I'm moving closer to work and there are other options. I got some tokens, which cover the transit fee. The only difference is that now I have to get a transfer ticket.

This morning, on the way down to work, the driver was hanging out around the bus, stretching his legs. So I paid my fare and got a transfer ticket because they're just sitting right there next to where you pay.

On the trip home in the afternoon, though, since it wasn't an end stop, the driver was in his seat. I paid my fare and he asked if I needed a transfer ticket. By this point, he was already underway. I said "Yes" and reached for one, not wanting to distract the guy from focusing on our physical safety.

He slapped my hand!

And then I got a lecture on how that was rude and I should just wait for him to hand it to me and some other things that I'll just leave undocumented.

I'll admit that sometimes, I'm not the most grown-up of grown-ups, but I don't think I'm young enough that slapping my hand... I don't even know how to finish that sentence.

I like to think that if our roles were switched, I'd go "WAIT! Let me get that for you." And then explained that he should have the driver hand it to him. But I'm not a bus driver, which I'm happy about.

And then there's this kid, who seems to be going to summer school. High school. And from the conversations I've overheard over the last couple of weeks, I'm guessing it's not to get a head start on the start of the next school year. Note the hairstyle that's beyond bad. The pants would be cool if they were tailored as more of a dressy slack than baggy pipes of fabric. And the t-shirt about 3 sizes too big. I think he's trying to get into that whole Joker vibe, but can't quite seem to get it together.

I tell you, if I were going to be a Batman supervillain, I'd want to be The Riddler. Suave, smart, and cool as a cucumber. Or maybe Black Mask. Also very dapper. Very deadly.

Staring down death

Thursdays at the office are Donut Day. There's an assortment of donuts and bagels in the breakroom for us, and every Thursday, I go down and try to find the one donut in the box most likely to send me into a diabetic coma. Since I'm not diabetic, though, it would take a seriously frosted donut to take me out. I ask "Which one is most likely to kill me?"

Today's candidate is this one. Chocolate frosted, with raspberry jam and pudding filling. I also try to get one of the ones in the middle because they get some of the frosting on the bottom too, from the next donut over.

I haven't eaten it yet, but if you don't hear from me in a couple of days, this was the one. I don't think this will be the one though.

Noise cancelling

I read an article from Time magazine the other day about how these tiny portable music devices with the crappy earbuds could contribute to an entire generation of people with significant hearing loss. At the end of the article, the author said that most of the doctors interviewed recommended headphones that either block noise or cancel it out.

I try to be very careful about how loud I turn my music up, but there are times I'm tempted to turn it up loud enough to hurt myself. This was one of those times. These guys were yelling at each other about how much cheaper it is to ride the bus than to drive back and forth to Provo every day and about their car troubles, arguing over the number of the bus parked in front of us, and where it was heading. I thought for a minute about turning my headphones up louder, but I'd rather not be the deaf guy on The Fifth Element in about 4 years.

Maybe I should start saving my pennies for some new headphones.

Put them together

There's a girl both with a BYU bookstore bag, reading something heady: Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. How's that for doubly relevant to this blog?

Aren't they supposed to go together?

There's a guy at the bus stop today who I think might suspect I've been trying to get a picture of him and seems slightly unhinged, so I'll use words instead. I tried, but I don't feel like getting into a fight. Wait a minute, here he comes.

I snapped it really quickly, so I'm not sure I got the detail I want to talk about here. His purse. He's standing there, smoking the butt of a cigarette he smoked earlier and rapping to himself with a black and white striped purse on his arm. It just doesn't seem to go with the rest of his outfit: jogging pants and a wasp-yellow "Ralph Becker for Mayor" shirt.

Who am I to judge though? I don't even have a purse to have to match my outfit to.

Book mashup

A lot of people read on the bus and you all know how I feel about books. (If you don't, I love them.) Since I'm always on the hunt for something that fits into my strange taste in literature, I look at what other people are reading. Let me warn you now that this is going to spiral pretty quickly into very nerdy literary territory.

As this is Utah, there are always people reading scriptures on the bus. That's not so much my style, so I'll move on. There are also people who enjoy the mass-market thrillers, whether they're political, military, or murder mystery books. Again, not me. But I read over their shoulders every now and then in case there's something I might like anyway. Some of those kinds of books are compelling, like The DaVinci Code.

And then there are the people reading the classics, which I usually do. Today, though, I saw a book out of the corner of my eye as I stalked around the stop that completely caught my attention and made me take a closer look. I saw "The T-something of the S-something-else-
ending-in-rew". My brain automatically dug through the book titles I knew that fit and mashed two of them together. In my head, I had The Taming of the Screw, a comedy by Henry James that no one was going to laugh at, as it involved an outsider taking a bet that he could make these children think that they were going crazy. That and it was written by Henry James, who ranks up there with Emily Dickinson for me in the list of people you couldn't pay me enough to want to become an expert in and I'd prefer not to read. (Anybody catch that Herman Melville reference? Way inside and dorkier than dorky, I know.)

Sadly, I realized when I looked closer that the book was really Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which was admittedly the best of the options there, but I was sad because the thought of a mashup between those stories made me laugh. Not that I'd read it, if it existed.

And while I'm on the subject of mashups, I saw this guy wearing this outfit. If you don't remember how freaking hot it was or if you're reading from somewhere else, it was about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. And it's kind of tough to tell because I was trying to be sneaky, but his jacket (covered in fringe) was a sturdy-looking leather. As was the hat.

My head gets hot in my hat and my hat's cotton canvas, not leather. I was also standing in the shade here. I can't imagine wearing my leather pants in weather like this. Uncomfortable isn't even the right word there. It would be downright miserable. So what was this guy thinking?

Time for everyone's favorite game...

It's that time again. Time to play everyone's favorite transit game: "Guess That Stain!"

Fortunately, I didn't inadvertently sit on this one and then wonder what it was that I had sat on. This would have been a difficult one to miss.

If you want to venture a guess, put it in the comments. I don't know what it was, since I didn't taste it (ew!), but before everyone says that it's pea soup or demon projectile vomit like from The Exorcist, let me say that there were a LOT of pistachio shells on the cement as I walked around. So who knows?

Beating a hot day

Today started out cooler and even rained a little bit. But as summer days typically go here, it dried up and warmed right up. It's been hot the last few months, but it looks like this guy's got the solution. I can't think of a better place for an air conditioner than at an outdoor bus stop. And to boost the efficiency, a vacuum.

Yes, I mock. I can't help myself. And that's really why you read this blog, right? Anyway, that's all fine and good that the guy had his air conditioner and his vacuum cleaner with him at the bus stop, but consider what happened just a couple of minutes after I took this picture.

His bus showed up. Can you imagine having to sit next to that guy on the bus? And I thought I had it rough when that smelly fat guy took up half my seat. At least I didn't have to share a seat with an awkward inanimate object. I couldn't just politely press my elbow and shoulder progressively harder into its side to make it move at the first available opportunity. It doesn't care. It's an air conditioner.

I think it's funny I just wrote that last paragraph about how it's an inanimate object that doesn't have the same attributes as a person and personified the object to make my point. I know I'm a big dork.

A special treat

Happy The Dark Knight weekend to all of you! This is shaping up to be a surprisingly fantastic weekend, judging from what I've seen on my trip home so far. First of all, an update to the previous blog post. Remember how I described the two girls that the guy was chatting up, since I couldn't quite get my camera ready quick enough before the bus got there? Well, fate smiles upon you; they got on the bus with me today and I got a picture of them. From the little I could gather over the sounds of the ever-tricky Impossible Missions Force, they sounded like they were speaking some Eastern European language. Maybe even Russian, which would have been good for me. I was more concerned with getting a picture of them for you.

The placement of the pole and the arm are kind of hiding one of the things I was telling you about, but you get the idea.

And this next story didn't happen while I was on the bus, but it has to do with transportation, so I'll share it anyway. I went grocery shopping and on my way back to the car, a guy said "Excuse me, we've run out of gas." Immediately, I was going to point out the gas station right across the street, but he finished his thought. "Do you have like a dollar or something so we could..."

Right then, I said, "I don't have any cash." What I was thinking was, "That was just bad planning on your part, wasn't it, guy?" I didn't because I'm at least that polite. I was prepared to help until he asked for money. It's not like gas prices have just gone up for a few, picked-on people, we all have to pay more for gasoline. Ask me if I feel bad for denying him. Go ahead, ask.

I don't. Not a bit.

More Right Revisited

So there I was, sitting in my seat when a guy plopped down next to me. The trouble with that is that he sat turned diagonally and took up both his seat and part of mine. Since I'm a relatively small guy, this is not uncommon. It's still really annoying, though. On top of that, he needed a shower.

Sadly, he got into a very loud conversation with the older woman across the aisle who needed a better bra. That's all I'm going to say about that topic, but they were practically yelling about illegal immigrants, church affiliations, and some other things I was trying my hardest to drown out with Alice Cooper. I think I need to get some nicer headphones that block out external noises a little better than these do; I'm afraid that one of these days there'll be a conversation I want to avoid so badly that I'll damage my hearing while trying to escape. I'd suggest a topic here, but I'm certain that some of you would bring it up just to bug me.

Which leads me to something I saw in school a lot. It seems like the people who talked the loudest usually didn't have even a vague clue of what they were talking about so loudly. Like these two people on the bus. And then you have that famous tiff between William F Buckley and
Gore Vidal. Both bright guys, but they were also sanctimonious, self-righteous pricks.

There's a guy at the station, mid-forties, who's been reading a presumably dry book (it looks like a textbook) on market forces or something to do with economics. I've seen him the last few days
reading the same thing, but today, he was reading at the station, facing the shady part where all the sane people wait. (I'm taking laps around the station in the sun, remember?)

Well, in the cooler shaded center, there are these two girls in their late teens, wearing clothes that highlight their gifts. One was wearing a summery dress with a low plunge neckline and the other one had an outfit that showed off her young, incredibly flat stomach. Both very nice, but I was busy walking and taking mental notes for this blog post. I noticed that the guy was doing less reading than gawking in their direction and was curious to see if anything happened from it.

On my way back around a couple of laps later, I saw that he'd moved to "read" while sitting on the same bench as they were. Not only that, but it looked like he was trying to chat them up! Smiling and chatting. There was some nodding when the girls talked. He was keeping a polite distance, but trying to cozy up. They were so out of his league and way too young for him, but I can't fault the guy for trying. In the end, he got on the bus with me and they didn't, so it apparently ended. Most good things do.

Dr. Horrible rocks

As a special treat, I've found something I want to share with you. It has nothing to do with riding public transit, but I watched it and almost hurt myself trying to be quiet at work. It's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. If you haven't heard about it yet, I want you to kind of discover it on your own, so do yourself a favor and click on the link. I promise, it's not a Rickroll.

What are you in for?

There's a girl, well, woman on the bus with an ankle monitor. I'd never seen one in real life before, just on TV. Makes me wonder what she did. My guess is that she was one of those people who cut off those tags that say "Do not remove under penalty of law."

The bus driver didn't take a turn quite wide enough and scraped the side of the bus with a shrub, breaking a window in the door in the process.

Also, there's a guy who looks almost like a detainee at Guantanamo Bay undergoing sensory deprivation. Long pants, long-sleeved shirt, plastic gloves, surgical mask, glasses and those earmuffs you wear at the shooting range. I would have expected a hat of some kind. With the rest of the outfit, a hood seems fitting. There are days that I feel like that's a prudent way to travel on the bus, so I don't catch the idiocy that's apparently rampant on the bus. Of course, then I wouldn't have anything to write on this blog. So I brave the bus for you. Now you don't have to.

The perfect container

According to the Adam West-era Batman, the perfect container is an egg. (It's from the movie.) Only in a fantasy world, though. In the real world, the perfect container appears to be a BYU Bookstore bag. Everyone who has one apparently can't find anything better because they get reused all the time. The BYU Bookstore bag understandably appears frequently in the Provo/Orem area, but I've seen it in other, farther locations. I saw a family hauling things around in one at Disneyland, and there's nothing wrong with the bags from Disneyland. And best of all, they're free with the purchase of something from the BYU Bookstore.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that ..."

At the bus station, I saw these two guys. Yes, they're guys. I thought the uniform they had chosen was an interesting one, but fit along with the stereotype. It's not unusual to see gay men, except for when you're in Provo. Then it's unusual. Although as my gay friend who used to live in Provo tells me, it's not as unusual as one might think, they're just more careful. I thought that was going to be the most exciting thing that happened to me on the bus today, but I was completely surprised.

I had no idea when I began writing this post that I would have the strangest experience on the bus to date.

It began when I sat down at the back of the bus and the most convenient open seat on the bus required me to step through a strange conversation about the nature of God, the universe and religion. I should have taken that for a sign. Fortunately, I had my iPod going and the bus engine was right behind my back, but the breaks between songs let me catch some of the undoubtedly uncomfortable conversation. Let me begin by describing the guy.

He had this interesting haircut, where it was all short, but the hair on the very top was really long and swooped back on the bottom. He was missing some of his front teeth. He was also carrying a tribal drum around with him. He had this great aloha shirt, cargo shorts, and some really nice new hiking boots. It wasn't an unusual picture for the bus, but given some context (which I'll get to later), this will make the outfit that much more strange.

As I already mentioned, I was listening to my iPod, so I didn't get pulled in as much as I'm sure I would have been had I not had my head in my music and reading. Also, I was out of his field of vision. Here are some of the topics they covered on the course of the bus ride. Mostly covered by this guy.

• Nature of the universe and religion with a guy across the bus who looked and sounded like Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob? This guy above actually said "It's different things, but it's like essence, man."
• He had emptied an opaque energy drink container and filled it with some kind of liquor, which he drank to help the trip go faster. It certainly fueled much of the journey's conversation. By the way, that's against the UTA rules.
• Something about the acidity of something that seedy people inject shrinks your veins, so you have to drink water to make your blood vessels bigger. I wasn't paying very close attention to that one because it involved needles and it seemed like total crap anyway.
• He was homeless. Currently. He had all of his belongings with him, including a sleeping bag, a bag of clothes and his freaking tribal drum. And really nice hiking boots. I tell you, if I were homeless, I wouldn't be lugging around a drum. Unless it magically conjured food. Which leads me to the next bullet point:
• He said something like "You know, I eat out of the trash every day and I don't have Hep A, Hep B, [he named some other diseases here that I didn't care enough to remember]. I wash it down with [some kind of liquor that I don't remember the name of]. I know I don't have them because I get tested often through The System."
• Which is how it came up that he has been part of the criminal justice system since back when he was a juvenile and had to get frequent testing as part of his probation to see if he's clean.
• Worked today for some guy in Provo who paid him in bikes. Until this afternoon.
• He can visualize and sculpt hair into shapes he's never imagined before. (If you can tell me how that works, I couldn't figure that one out.) Not just cut and style it, but he can just imagine it and put gel in it and then sculpt it like it was clay. Once, he made big elephant ears on the sides of someone's head out of hair and a trunk. He made an elephant head out of someone's hair and then months later, his friends tell him about other people they've seen with animals sculpted out of their hair. Where are all those people with hair animal sculptures hanging out? I've never seen one.
• He said something about telling jokes to yourself that you don't laugh at just to keep your mind occupied while you do something with the gutter. I don't know about you, but I like the jokes I tell in my head. I think I'm a funny person.
• And then he was talking to the Hispanic guys next to me about his white supremacist friend. Talking to them, he used the word 'homie' a lot.

The one time I got pulled into the conversation, he looked at my Lenny Kravitz shirt and asked who it was. I told him it was Lenny Kravitz, which launched him into some discussion about Lenny deciding to rock rather than be a rastafarian that I only kind of listened to because I was watching my episode of Mission: Impossible. And then when I got off the bus and waited for the train, he yelled over the fence, "Hey, man. Kravitz really rocks man. I know." And then he started singing a Lenny Kravitz song for me. It was, um, a nice thought.

Again, God bless El Steve for inventing the iPod. It keeps me out of conversations I don't want to be included in, because they're so strange it's better to just document them as an uninvolved observer.

Worst possible bus schedule

Together, the schedule two busses I take each day make up the worst possible schedule. Both ways, the bus I'm trying to catch leaves about two minutes before the bus I'm on to get to the station arrives. That means I have to hang out at the bus station for about a half hour. It doesn't usually bother me because I can think and watch the strange people who are also waiting there.

This afternoon, though, my bus got to the station in record time, despite the road deconstruction and the other bus waited for just a little while, so I made it. That means I'll be home earlier than I usually am. Just another happy addition to the fantastic weekend I'm anticipating.

In a late, mostly unrelated note, just because you paint your face like Darth Maul from Star Wars, it doesn't give you special evil Sith powers. A teenage skater kid had painted his face like Darth Maul and tried to stare me down.

You're doing it wrong

I was sitting on the bus this morning, liberating hostages and destroying a poppy field in SOCOM, and a guy plopped down on the seat next to me, talking and laughing very loudly into his cell phone in some European language I didn't recognize. I could tell some Germanic influence, but it wasn't German. It was probably some Scandinavian language, but that doesn't matter as much as when the sun started shining on the screen of my PSP.

I'm careful to sit on the shady side of the bus so that I can do things like watch Mission: Impossible episodes or play SOCOM, but for some reason, I was getting a glare on my screen. It threw off my bad-guy-targeting, so I looked up to see that the bus was going the wrong direction on the route. I don't know if the bus driver got confused halfway down to Provo or if there was some kind of detour because I was too busy capturing a warlord, but it reminded me of Mr Mom, where Michael Keaton's dropping his kid off at school and the kid keeps saying "You're doing it wrong."

And then the other bus actually did take a detour because of road construction, meaning that I finally dragged my butt into the office far later than I had planned.

Déjà vu

Same bus route, different footrub couple.Seriously? Why do I have to deal with this two days in a row? Have I done something awful in a previous life to deserve this? I'm not John Tesh, so I can't be blamed for singlehandedly misaligning the planets and the stars. He's still alive. I guess I could be Vlad the Impaler, but everyone did that kind of thing back then, right? If there were ever a time I didn't want to be me, this might be one of them. But there isn't, so it's not.

Our tour guide

Right behind me on the bus this morning is a little girl, probably about 4, who's providing a brilliant commentary on our trip and every now and then, treats us all to a little song. My favorite so far is when the bus started moving, she very clearly told everyone "Here we go! Hold on tight!"

There's also a lot of "whee!" and "Is this it, Mommy?" We had just left about 2 minutes before.

That was fun, but then I got on the bus that comes down to the office and because of construction, we unfortunately had to take a detour, so it took longer. That wouldn't usually be a problem, but today, the bus smelled like the lifts in Ukraine. Since probably most of you haven't had that singular experience, let me do my best to describe it. First of all, they aren't elevators. Elevators are nice. You can lean on the walls of an elevator. Elevators also have lights.

Lifts, on the other hand, make you afraid to touch anything but the floor button, and even then, you do it thinking about the next time you're going to wash your hands. If you could use your transcendental meditation skills to levitate yourself so you don't have to touch the floor, you definitely would. There might be a lightbulb in the lift and sometimes, the light might even reach the floor and you wish it wouldn't. But really what's awful that relates the two experiences is the smell. Ukrainian lifts almost always have a pool of urine on the floor. A guy goes out with his buddies, gets totally wasted, and then heads home. He just can't hold it anymore on the way up to his apartment and this seems like as good a place as any, so he just lets it go in the lift. And no one wants to admit they did it and no one wants to clean it up, so it's there for who knows how long, drunk guys just adding new stuff to what's left over after some of it has evaporated over the last few days. That's what the bus smelled like this morning. I'm hoping the ride home this afternoon is less smelly.

My shadow

So I was stalking around the bus stop like a badass in a floppy hat, trying to get some exercise in. I sit at a desk every day, so I figure I should get up and take the time to move around when it presents itself. As a result, I take laps around the bus station, which I'm certain looks strange, but in my head, I look like one of the guys from Reservoir Dogs, walking all tough in slow motion. If you're having trouble remembering what that looks like, this should jog your memory.

Anyway, I was just on my little constitutional when I noticed a guy kind of following me but going the opposite direction. This tall, skinny guy in the stripy black shirt.

I'm fine if he wants to walk around too, but as I came around, he'd pop out at me from behind a pillar, from around a corner. Was he trying to scare me? Hoping to walk out of his body, like in the Kurt Vonnegut story? Whatever his motives, it was strange to have someone popping out at me on kind of a regular basis.

In an unrelated note on PDA, the bus is already an adventure in odor without adding your smelly feet to it. And I'm glad my phone has a form-masking cover on it; otherwise, the footrub guy sitting next to me would have assailed me with questions about it, like he did to the poor guy sitting across from him (you can probably see him in the footrub picture) with his brand spankin new touchscreen phone.

As so many of my observations on public transportation point out in the subtext, it frequently pays to be somewhat invisible. If only I could find a way to make these strange people I travel with invisible. And smell better.

What are you smoking?

It's not strange at all to see a group of people hanging around the bus stop, smoking. And you'll probably have to sit next to one of them. No biggie. But this morning, I saw someone smoking something you don't see very often, unless you hang around in very strange circles.

There was a guy sitting on a bench, reading his newspaper, and smoking a pipe. No, he wasn't Sherlock Holmes, and yes, it was still stinky. A pipe! What, seriously? Warning: I'm about to rant a little bit. Here it is, the 21st century, smoking is on the decline because people are starting to realize just how dumb smoking is, and this guy is still smoking a pipe. When I was a kid, my dad--a respiratory therapist--had a box of preserved lungs of both normal people and smokers. There's a huge difference in the lung tissues just from that one choice. Kind of weird, I know, but that explains something about me, doesn't it? Not only that, but in fourth grade, we did experiments in science class to observe the effects of tobacco ourselves. I've had three grandparents die from the direct effects of smoking. I'm pretty sure that most people now have stories like that. And yet, people still decide to smoke themselves to death.

To quote Pepe the King Prawn, "Smoking is very bad for you, okay?" If you smoke, you really should quit, and today's as good a day as any to start your new life as a non-smoker. Until then, I'll still write about you on my blog about the silly things I see, riding on public transit.

Pressure wash

We got to a stop today where a worker was pressure washing the stop. After the people got off the bus, he turned and decided to wash the windshield. It was kind of surprising, like a waterfight. So we sat at the bus stop for a few minutes while the guy washed off the front of the bus. Don't they take care of that at the garage at night?

In another note, I think it's interesting how many people seem to travel around in their pajamas. Like this guy.You can't see it particularly well, but he's totally wearing pajama pants, a t-shirt, and slippers. But really, I took this picture because his hair is freaking sweet. Mine will never do that, which makes me kind of sad. I'm sure my wife's glad about that because she wouldn't want to be associated with me if my hair were like that. On another note, I wonder if he was actually talking to my friend, Ron, there. But back to the point, it's not just this guy traveling around in pajamas. There were two women just to my right about 20 feet who looked like they were wearing their pajamas on the bus, and have you been on an airplane in the last 10 years or so? I'm all for being comfortable while you travel, but seriously... Does that have to involve what you wear to bed?

You can be plenty comfortable in real clothes. I promise. At least I haven't seen someone just in their underwear. Yet. When I do, I'll do my very best to get you a picture of that because that'll definitely be worth documenting.

Eyebrow brush?

I'd take a picture of it, but the girl next to me is brushing her eyebrows with a pink toothbrush. What's that all about? Aren't there special brushes for brows? Or has my aesthetician always been using a toothbrush and I haven't seen it because my eyes were closed?

She's been putting makeup on this whole bus ride with a little handheld mirror. Seems to me that it would be more comfortable to be in my bathroom at home, where I didn't have to hold all my makeup in my lap and had plenty of indoor lights and a mirror that didn't jiggle around. But what do I know about putting on makeup? Not enough to be an expert, but enough to be a metrosexual.

And how long does it take? Either she's really insecure about her face or she's a perfectionist. I don't know which one it is. But she's not dressed to be going somewhere that she'll need that much of a face. The girls I know who have spent that long on their faces were getting ready to go, say, to the ballet. Or a show at an art gallery. And having just got off the bus and seeing her whole face, I can't tell what she was doing.

Speaking of makeup, I was walking around the station at the mall and saw a blonde walking towards me with feathered hair ala Farrah Fawcett-Majors. She had on a blue sleeveless shirt with a floral print and long denim shorts, cute little sandals, and some of those big cat glasses that were so popular in the 60s and 70s.

As she got closer, though, she was about 60 years old and had her makeup all done like Baby Jane Hudson. I tried to get a picture for you, but it didn't turn out. Also, I'm trying to be careful and get angles of people that you would probably not recognize them if you saw them on the street.

Back to Baby Jane, though, the porcelain doll look isn't a good one for anybody. Unless you're at a comic book or video game convention and you're into cosplay.

Then I got on the train. For some reason a guy sat across from me. One of those guys who walks around with his pants down around the middle of his thighs, showing off his nasty black underwear, has to hold up the waistband to keep them from falling completely off his body. Had one of those tribal pattern tattoos around his arm, but it looked like it was drawn on with a fine-point Sharpie. He had that pathetic gangster swagger and plopped down in front of me. Then his girlfriend came over. A shortish girl who dressed like she was thinner than she actually was. Her shorts were too short and so were the sleeves of her t-shirt. Let me explain.

Sitting, watching the two of them through my mirrored sunglasses, I learned some frightening things about them. Judging from the mix of bruises and hickeys on her exposed body and the complaints of the guy, either they liked to play rough or he was even less of a winner than he dressed and acted like. He complained that he didn't see a point in arguing with her (a glimmer of intelligence) because they would fight, yell, have fantastic sex and then fight again. He suggested that they just skip straight to the sex, at which point she started rubbing the back of his nasty black underwear. He kept flipping his rusty pocketknife open, making it squeak, and then twirling it around in his hand.

Real men keep their pocketknives in good working order.

I was not impressed. But I wasn't the one he was trying to impress. The girl covered in hickeys looked kind of like she got attacked by that salt sucker monster in that episode of the original Star Trek. It was disgusting.

Left in the dust

You remember how it's 2008? This guy with the portable DVD player has been watching movies on the bus the last couple of days. Forgive the fanboyism, but even iPod nano models play video now and still fits in your pocket. And if you're not inclined to follow Steve Jobs like a little lemming with square-rimmed glasses, there are all kinds of little electronic devices that can play videos. I've watched Kill Bill on my PSP, I've seen a guy watching the Spongebob Squarepants Movie on his Zune, and there are people who play on their laptops during the trip.At least he's upgraded from his cassette player. I don't know where my cassettes are any more, and even if I did, I don't have anything to play them on anymore.

While we're on the subject of entertainment technology on the bus, nothing beats a good book. You just have to recognize up front that your book is going to have a rough trip. I'm careful with my books, but my copy of Gravity's Rainbow will never be the same.

Extreme style

Here's an example of the kind of extreme styles you find on public transit. Yes, this is a girl with a short mohawk. You may be able to make out the wispy little sideburns, but what you can't see in this picture is the Amy Winehouse-style eye makeup.

In this picture to the left, you'll see the saggy-pantsed, tattooed slacker in his natural habitat. I stole this picture right before one of them yelled out, "Dude, we totally got to get back to this area of town, like, tonight."

And the other one, even louder (remember that louder means righter?) yelled, "'Yo, Vicki, we got lost on the bus.' Heh huh huh huh." And then they both laughed just like Beavis and Butthead. The sad thing was that the one directly across from me gave me one of those reverse nods, as if he were trying to make up for his demeanor. The kind of gesture where you lift your chin towards someone that can easily be misinterpreted as an aggressive action. I just stared at him, which would have had more of an impact, had I not been wearing my mirrored sunglasses. Again, a great excuse for not engaging with someone on transit. I can always feign that I was examining something else or had my eyes closed, and no one would know the difference.

a short note to the readers

Hey, I know that some of you are going to be reading this just through the RSS feeds, but may I suggest you use the RSS as a kind of trigger to read the posts on the site itself. Since I write the majority of the posts on my phone and post them while I'm out and about, the formatting is a little off and I'll probably get onto a regular computer to update and expand it a little bit. If you already read the RSS of the last post on loud people, I added some more experience from the rest of the trip home, which you'll find amusing. Maybe.

Louder means it's more right. Right?

There's an old guy behind me who's yelling at the poor kid across the bus who's trying to study. The old guy is listing the birthdays of all of England's royal family and saying that we'll give them Manuel Noriega if they'll come show us how to do border patrol. Really loud.

One of the nice things about having my iPod headphones on is that I miss most of what other people are saying. The downside is that there are a few people who don't get the hint that if I have my headphones on while I'm on the bus and I don't take them off when they talk to me, it's a pretty safe bet that I don't want to be part of that conversation. As a result, they usually just talk louder.

You know that everyone on the bus was thrilled to hear this guy's plan to let the Brits do to Noriega what they did to Phillip II. I think he might have meant Charles II, but I'm too smart to get into that discussion.

Along the same lines, there was one guy in front of me, yelling at another guy in front of me about how college was a waste and the Job Corps was such a better option. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay if someone doesn't want to go to college and the Job Corps seems like it's pretty cool, but the guy he was trying to convince said he wanted to get an associate's degree in graphic design, get his bachelor's in illustration and animation and minor in creative writing. Seemed to everyone within earshot like a highly ambitious plan, and having worked on part of that plan in my own educational pursuits, unless he was far more gifted and brilliant that I am (which is a slim possibility), it wasn't going to happen. Anyway, in that case, louder equals righter. Right?

Then I was on the train. This guy got on. The thing on his head looked like he cut the sleeve off an old white t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Please note the very fashion-forward choice of plaid with a garish floral print, white socks and sandals with the shorts. On top of which he was talking to his food, singing a little song that I couldn't make out the words to as I was listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on my iPod, and then had a scintillating and loud conversation with a young couple on the train. I wrote it down in my notebook so that I could get it verbatim. He was talking about how cool it is to be in the center section of the train when it goes around the 90 degree turns downtown. Then, out of the blue, he gave this loud little gem of insight. "You know what's the best thing about this town, man? See's Candies, man. They've got this toffee about this big [he showed how big they were] and it's covered in chocolate. It's like, three dollars, but it's so good, man." And then he got off the train. Just like it always happened on the Lone Ranger shows, we all sat around thinking, "Who was that extremely right guy with a t-shirt sleeve on his head?" But he hadn't left a silver bullet or anything behind. Which is just as well.

Personal hygiene

You know how some people smell like they sleep in a pool of dog vomit? Just making sure I'm not the only one who's had my olfactory senses assaulted.

We have liftoff!

I wrote this whole great blog post earlier in an email, pushed send, and my email program crashed. So I lost the whole brilliant post. I tell you what, I hope the new software that comes out in the next couple of weeks for my phone fixes the crashes I have every now and then because when they happen, it really bugs me.

Today, there were about four kids standing off to the side as people loaded onto the bus, and they each had a huge suitcase. Bigger than the one I lived out of in Europe for a month and a half on vacation. Since they didn't have anywhere to stash the suitcases, they threw them onto seats. As people at later stops climbed on the bus, looking for a seat, they saw some places, but once they got back to the seat, they saw that the seats were actually taken. By huge suitcases.