Friday, August 05, 2005

General observations from my commute this morning

It is a really great day, weatherwise, and there are tons of fishing boats of varying sizes in the sound. I am taking this to mean that there's some kind of salmon run, or something similar. We'll probably check out the fish ladder at the Locks this weekend to see. We were there last September and saw a cool fish that looked kind of broken. We named him Bendy. He's dead now.
On the bus, there was a very blond, angular, thin Ichabod Cranish guy in a navy blue suit with a red and blue striped tie. He was reading a highlighted book, and his mouth moved. He had a backpack with a Chile key chain attached. My instant thought was- religious missionary of some sort. And then he closed the book and I got a glimpse of the cover. It was the Book of Mormon in Spanish. Damn I'm good.
Walking to my building from the Museum, I saw a crazy looking guy. He was clean and dressed better than some of the tourists. But I could tell that he was crazy. So many of those crazy people have that totally lost look in their eyes. He was one of those. At lunch, I was walking back, and I passed another crazy guy. this one was more obvious- he was using a stick to scrape dirt out of the crack between the crosswalk cement and the roadway- while mumbling to himself. I didn't get a look at his eyes.
I find it funny how secluded people are on the bus. It's like they're in their own little chambers of silence (only without the echo). No one makes eye contact on purpose (unless they're tourists), and they don't talk. It's strange. My last mass-transit experience was in Montreal. Albeit, it wasn't a good test case for this- there was a lot more interaction between passengers. The reason it wasn't a good model is that there were about 200,000 people in town for the F1 race, and they were all taking the subway with us.
Every morning and evening when the weather is clear, I get a clear view of Mt. Ranier to the south. It is one of the prettiest things I see all day. I just thought I'd gloat a little. Remember- I'm still on the damned bus.

5 comments:

(S)wine said...

i think it' s pretty much a given that any young American going to or coming from Chile is a missionary. They ought to just stay the feck there and not return.

slyboots2 said...

I just wanna know where he was going in his Sunday- go to church- finery. My Mother-in-Law (Japanese) said that when they met Mormons in her villiage, they didn't like them. Not because they were Mormon. But because they spoke such a refined/educated form of Japanese that they sounded too upper crust. I always thought this was hilarious.

(S)wine said...

Also, anyone pushing and insisting on "converting" others is just pure, shit-for-brains, automaton swine. That's why I think organized religion is going to be the downfall of Man. We're all retards.

slyboots2 said...

Does that make actual retards double retards? Or just normal?

(S)wine said...

I don't consider retarded people "retards." You know what I'm saying.