Empty Bus

As frequent readers will remember, I ride the bus to work, and every so often there is a post called "Today on the Bus." Usually this is where I write about some of the more colorful Portlanders I have met over the years, or more accurately I try not to meet. Today something happened that is very rare, I was the only person on the bus. This has happened before for a stop or two, but today I was the only person on the bus for almost half the ride and when I got off the bus driver was all alone. I felt a little sad for him.

Sleeping on the Bus

I guess this person had a busy long weekend. She did not seem very happy about going to work this morning. Personally I am too paranoid to fall asleep on the bus. One, you could touch your head, or worse your face, to something really gross; two, you might miss your stop; or three someone could think you are venerable and touch you or steal something from you. Not a good idea.

If Muslims had Christmas

If Muslims had Christmas, this guy would be a great Santa Claus.

What ever happened to David Lee Roth?

Turns out he is in Portland, riding the bus around in his cut off jeans. He looks great.

Purple Guy

I see this guy on the bus all the time. Today, he was especially color coordinated in purple, maybe like Prince in his late 50's.

Holey Shoe

We have been experiencing biblical like rain here in Portland for the last few weeks and there is nothing I can think of that would be worse than a hole in your shoe in this weather.

Head Injury

This fella was sitting in front of me on the bus today. At first I thought, wow that is an amazingly large scar. Then after a while I started wondering what happened to this guy and if he suffered major brain damage. You know the brain is an amazing thing, you can loose large parts of it, and it often compensates with other parts of the brain taking over. Unfortunately this guy never turned around, or really even moved on the entire trip downtown, so I have no idea how functional he is.

Could be an interesting show

Today on the bus a guy next to me took a phone call, which is usually annoying, but this one proved to be somewhat entertaining:

Hello

Yes, I am available tonight.

What's the show?

It's at Dante's?

I can be there at 7, do you want me to get there earlier so we can rehearse?

What should I wear?

I don't think I have furry pants, but I can look around. Is there a back up?

Short shorts? Leather short shorts? Yeah, I got those.

What's your name again?

GWF? OK, see you at 7.

It might be worth mentioning that the guy on the phone is mid-30's, about 5' 6", and about as normal looking as you can imagine. If I wasn't old and lazy, I would make an effort to go to Dante's tonight to see how this plays out.

Clairvoyant

Everyday you meet interesting people on the bus. Today we got to hear how this lady has visions, like the the lady on the TV show Medium. She has had them her entire life, she wishes she didn't, but what can you do? As proof of her clairvoyance, she offered up this story. When she was in high school, she told her boyfriend he shouldn't take her car because something bad would happen. He did it anyway and he ended up getting arrested. As the story unfolds we find out that he hot wired the car and that he was a drug dealer on his way to make a buy. Seems amazing that this could somehow lead to "something bad happening." I don't have visions, but I can tell you if a drug dealing friend takes my car against my will, there is a pretty strong chance it won't turn out well.

Hey can I borrow your car?

Uh, what are you going to do with it?

Rob a bank.

Uh, you know I am a little clairvoyant and I am having a vision that his ends badly.

Relax, I got it covered.

Taking a Strange Bus

Everyday I take the number 15 bus to work. If you've read this blog before you know there are a lot of interesting people on the bus. You see and hear a lot of weird and wonderful stuff and over time you look forward to seeing the bus people. Yesterday I took a new bus I had never been on before. This is always a scary venture into the unknown, but it also provides the opportunity to meet an entirely new group of bus people. I wanted to go to a class over on the east side between home and work, and I saw that the number 20 bus would actually be the fastest way to get there. It stops close to work, so I didn't have to walk very far, and it dropped me a few blocks from where I needed to be. If you don't know the bus route, the hard part is figuring out where to get off. You are always worried that you went too far or that you'll get off too early. Luckily this bus had a reader board that said where the next stop was so I did not screw it up.

So what about the bus people? The #20 bus goes through a little rougher area than my normal bus (if you don't count the methadone clinic), so I was hoping to see some color, but unfortunately it was pretty boring. The people looked pretty normal and dressed fairly nicely. I might go as far as to say that it was a better group of people.

My Grandmother has Worms

I think I have talked about school field trips on the bus before, but to refresh your memory, Portland schools do not have yellow buses, so kids take public transit to school and on field trips. Every so often, 20 or so kids will get on the bus at around 36th street and ride downtown to a museum, the library, or wherever. Usually it is not too big of a deal, but if the bus is full it can be a tight squeeze. This morning was one of those days. One of the teachers was sitting next to me and a couple of kids were in front of us sharing the seat with an older lady. The teacher kept asking the kids questions about where they lived and what high school they would be going to. This led one of the girls to start talking about her grandma:

Girl: They put my grandma in a home, she things she's sick.
Teacher: What's wrong with her?
Girl: She's a hypochondriac.
Teacher: How do you know she's not sick?
Girl: She says she has worms.
Old Lady: People can have worms.
Teacher: When I was a kid growing up in the south we wore shoes so we wouldn't get worms in our feet.
Girl: What?
Old Lady: They cut people open all the time and find worms.
Girl: What?
Old Lady: She probably really has worms and they are driving her crazy. You need to help her.

Bus is Full Again

You can tell winter is here as all the people that walked or rode their bike to work over the summer are starting to cram back on the bus, to avoid the rain. The half empty bus rides of the summer are over. Today the bus was full several stops before we got to the downtown, so I am sure the later buses will be passing lots of people up.

You also get to experience a lot more coughing and sneezing on the bus this time of year. If I catch the swine flu, I am sure it is going to be from a bus person. There are some pretty sick looking people and none of them were covering up when they sneezed. In fact it seems to be a competition to see how far you across the bus you can spray your spittle. As a first line defense, I like to keep my full rain gear on for the ride to stay dry. I am also thinking of investing in some of those surgical masks.

Bus knitting season kicks off today

Knitting is back! I have not seen anyone knitting on the bus all summer, but now that the weather is getting a little colder, people are starting to knit those wool hats and sweaters again. Here's a guy who is easily in his 50's happily knitting away with his iPod on. I am having a hard time imagining what he could be making, maybe a nice scarf.

How much coffee do you need?

I need to say upfront that I do not drink coffee, so I don't understand why people need to spend $5 for a bucket of coffee in the morning to get going. I understand that caffeine is a stimulant, but a little moderation needs to be practiced here. The cup I saw on the bus this morning looked like the size before you move up to a Big Gulp.

I also think it's strange that coffee shops don't have small or regular coffee's anymore. I have heard all the jokes about the fancy names they use, but they basically start at medium and go up from there. My favorite is venti, it sounds pretentious, but it's Italian for 20, as in 20 oz. I have never personally seen an Italian drink a 20 oz coffee, they all sip it out of little espresso cups. I think an Italian would be sick if they saw the sizes of our coffee cups. If you need 20 oz of coffee to wake up in the morning, you may need to re-evaluate your sleeping habits. Of course, you probably can't sleep as you are so full of caffeine. And wait till you try to save some money and cut back on your coffee intake. That's when you find out coffee is just as addictive as nicotine.

Tiger Woods on the Bus

Today I watched Tiger Woods play golf on the bus. Thanks to the PGA Championship application for the iPhone I was able to watch a couple of holes between home and work. Having an iPhone app is nothing new for the major tournaments, the Masters was the first to launch one back in April. It was actually really good, which is surprising given that the folks in Augusta are a little antiquated when it comes to technology. For example, they will not license footage of their tournament for the Internet, so if you make a commercial with Masters footage, you can't put it on your website.

Back to the PGA Championship app. This is the first one that has actually cost money, although it is only $1.99. It has some cool new 3.0 features including push info on five players of your choice, so you can get score updates even if the app is not on. Having lived with it for a day now, I am loving the video features: you can follow a entire round of one marquee group in the morning and one in the afternoon (needless to say Tiger was in the AM group and Phil was in the PM group); and you can watch the action at the par three's. They are also letting you vote on the marquee groups for tomorrow. The leaderboard is a little glitchy and hard to navigate, but it does give you a lot of stats. Adding the players I cared about to the favorites made it easier to deal with. The alerts are actually starting to bug me. I think I may cut them back to just get a notice when my favs are teeing off and when they finish. The hole by hole scoring for five players is too intrusive. Finally, I have to say the full on website is pretty good too. They are streaming the network coverage as well as the video you get on the app. They have a lot more stats and you can also live twitter with the TV commentators. All said, I would recommend this app for the real golf fan.

Portland's Living Room

They call Pioneer Square, Portland's living room, because on sunny days everyone hangs out there eating lunch, reading, watching the performers, or just doing what you do in a nice public space. It seems like this guy wanted to expand the concept and decided that a bus stop outside a homeless shelter on Burnside could also be Portland's living room. In fact, he is so comfortable there he thought it was fine to just take of his shirt and lay around reading the paper. At least he kept his shorts on.

Bus Injury

If I were injured or venerable to injury I don't think I would ride the bus to work, especially at rush hour. This poor guy has a broken ankle (or worse) and has a cast on his leg, but his toes are sticking out. He was sitting comfortably in one of the seats reserved for old or handicapped people minding his own business when the bus starts to get really full. People were pushing by him to get to the back of the bus, when suddenly this huge guy trips and falls over the cast guy. Cast guys was screaming in pain. I had my headphones on and I clearly heard him yelling, so it was loud. For the rest of the trip the big guy kept apologizing and asking if cast guys was OK. He also kept insisting that he did not do it on purpose, which made me think, what kind of person would do something like that on purpose? You'd have to be a pretty cold hearted mother to do that, but then again bus people can be pretty mean.

Reading on the Bus

When I was a kid I could never read in the car or on the bus ride to school, which did not bode well if you forgot you had a book report due. I would always get car sick whenever I tried. So, I am constantly surprised to see people reading on the bus on the way to work. What if they get sick in front of everyone and throw up in the bus? Maybe as you get older car sickness subsides, because I have yet to see anyone puke on the bus (from reading). In fact this morning the bus was pretty full and almost everyone had a book or a newspaper they were reading (the earlier buses tend to have more people that look like they can read). I have even started to dip my toe in the water. I started with reading my overnight e-mail and have now graduated to reading the New York Times on my iPhone. So far I feel pretty good.

Boardin' on Mt. Tabor

One thing I have yet to try, but looks like a lot of fun, is hiking to the top of Mt. Tabor and riding a skateboard all the way down Belmont. I see a lot of guys on long boards cruising down on the weekends as they go flying by the house. Of course this can be a little dangerous as you share the road with cars and trucks, but the worst part would be getting back up the hill. For the lazy people, like me, you can skate down and ride the bus most of the way back up.

There's Ink Under that Sweater Set

In Portland you see normal looking girls, dressed in professional clothes like they are headed to work or in a sun dress headed off to class just like you would in any other city, except in Portland you realize that is not a print on their shirt sleeve it's an arm full of ink. It is amazing to me how many young women have tattoos, and I am not just talking about an ankle tat or one on the lower back. I am talking all up and down the arms and legs, while everything else about them looks like the girl next door. In the old days you expected this look from biker chicks or girls with purple hair, not your nurse practitioner. I bet it would be impossible to find a women in Portland between the ages of 20 and 35 that does not have some kind of tattoo.