The Bus

I know, I know, I've come under some scrutiny for lighting up the facebook newsfeed this past week, but I'm trying to get a lot of stuff done in a new town while catching everyone from back home and around the country up to speed. Anyway, thought this anecdote from today might do ya some good.

I rode the bus through Roxbury yesterday and today. FYI, Roxbury is the low-income area to the east of where I have been and will be living. It's not the most exciting or scenic sort of a trip, unless like me you've been known to cruise down South Salina Street in Syracuse at all hours of the day and night. It's a bit like that.

It's good people watching, and good for a spatial and directional understanding of this crazy new city I've landed in. I hopped off the bus at the wrong point on the way to the South Bay shopping centre yesterday and had to hop back on at a different point. To get an understanding of this, it took me an hour and a half to go about 2 miles. On the way back, it only took 40 minutes. However, when I switched buses at Dudley Station, I wasn't familiar with the signs and didn't know where to pick up the 66-bus back home. I spoke with Frank while I was riding at one point, and when he asked me what I was doing I replied, "Riding a bus in the wrong direction in Boston." Having lived here himself, he acknowledged the commonality of that problem. Anyway, while I was at the bus station, THREE people asked me if I was lost and pointed me toward my bus. It was this bustling hive that might scare the crap out of a regular suburbanite, but it turned out to be kinda fun.

So I took the same route back today, having bought an airbed yesterday. Today was time to buy a computer. It was again a long trip there and back, but at least today I expected it and knew where I was going. So there I was, sitting at Dudley waiting for the 66 with three big boxes of computer stuff to haul onto the bus with me, when I met Jose. Maybe it was that I was the only white guy he'd seen all day, I don't know, but Jose and I went on for 5-1o minutes about how he's in a sober-house and how I knew people who had done AA and gotten really cleaned up. It was a good time. He was a really nice guy and I pray for him that he stays on the road.

Then, his bus came and the old Caribbean man right next to me started talking to me endlessly in an English that I could barely understand. I made out only a few sentences of what he saying, try as I did. He said, "Americans run their mouths too much." Amid 5 minutes of mouth-running that I didn't understand, I caught that. Oh, sweet and delicious irony! How I love you so.

My computer boxes and I made it back here just fine. We're going to enjoy a quiet evening. Hope you have a good one too!