"I See You!"

Also waiting for a bus at my transfer point downtown, she's in her mid-20s. Her long, brown hair hangs in two thick braids. She's both plump and big-boned, wearing a jean jacket, black pants, and high black boots.

As I'm taking in my surroundings, I see her look at me as she makes a call on her cell phone. Then quite unexpectedly I hear her say, "I see you!"

My instinct tells me she's referring to me at the same time as it tells me she's not, but by the time I've reconciled the contradiction I have already looked at her. She has turned around and is waving at a friend who works in a ground-floor office in the building next to the bus stop. "I just sent you a text message," she adds. Their conversation spirals downward into girlish giggles about how cool it is to see a person through impermeable glass, talk, and send written communication all at the same time.

It's almost like they're really communicating.

There's my bus.
.

Finally

He shares my last bus on my way to work nearly every morning. He never speaks, and always has a slight grin on his face. This makes me suspect he's got some slight degree of mental disability; he's got that sort of peaceful shine that "normal" people don't have.

But for months now he has somewhat frustrated me, because whenever he gets to the back door of the bus, he has the hardest time activating its switch.

For those of you unfamiliar with rear bus doors, one common design features two half-doors that open out. Each door has a long, convex, yellow rubber sleeve running from top to bottom.

I'm not sure if it contains pressurized air or an electronic trigger of some kind, but whatever the case, if you press either sleeve with about the same amount of force you'd use on a TV remote button, you hear a hiss of rushing pneumatics and the doors open (assuming the driver has activated them).

For some reason though, this fellow feels that he has to press both sleeves at the same time, which isn't the case. Sure, it works if you do, but it's completely unnecessary. To make this more complicated, he has very small hands, and he will only use one of them. For about a week when we first starting sharing the bus, I would stand impatiently behind him, watching him try to stretch his hand across to both sleeves, with neither switch activating because he's splitting the difference and not properly pressing either one.

I would give him 3-4 seconds, which is an excruciatingly long time to wait when you know the bus driver could at any moment figure, "I guess those bozos at the back door changed their minds and don't want to get off after all, so I might as well continue on my way." Before that could happen, I would reach over the short man and press the sleeve myself to open the doors. But that just felt so rude.

So I've taken it upon myself in the intervening months since I first observed this to get to the back door before he does so I get to hit the switch. And I'd conspicuously make quite a show of how simple it was - I'd raise my hand high enough so he could see over my shoulder from behind me, and extend my index finger sharply, the rest of my hand closed in a tight fist. Then I'd smoothly move my hand directly forward and lightly touch one of the yellow sleeves, then pull my hand back as the air began to rush through the system.

There's my stop. Today he is seated closer to the rear door it than I am, and he gets up well before the stop, sending a jolt of dread into me. Oh no, I think to myself. Not again.

I decide to let it go and do the reach-over again.

But he surprises me. In one fluid motion, he pokes his extended index finger at one sleeve and pulls it back as the door starts to swing open. He has learned! My subtlety (or perhaps lack of it) has paid off.

It's nice to know that I won't have to race him for that door anymore.
.

The Sky

Today my thoughts and eyes are drawn to the sky passing by outside the bus.

A crowd of pigeons rests on an apartment rooftop. The apartment owners, apparently tired of pigeon poop falling on their tenants, have erected chicken wire sloping down from the roof to the next ledge down. This prevents the birds from landing anywhere directly over the front door.

And in an effort to scare the pigeons off the roof entirely, an artificial owl has been placed on the rooftop. I wonder how long it took the area's pigeons to realize it was nothing to fear. The owl is quite covered in pigeon poop by now.

A few blocks later, a seagull lands atop a lamppost in a grocery store parking lot. This startles and annoys the other seagull atop that post, and he flaps his wings and heads west, looking for another perch from which to spot food dropped by humans. My bus keeps up with him for a while but he eventually vanishes from my sight, behind a tall building.

We stop at a red light. Out my window I see a Safeway plastic grocery bag, snagged by one handle on an overhead power line. The wind is puffing the bag up, but still it remains caught on the line and merely spins in futility as the moving air spills out of its free side. I've seen shoes tossed over power lines, but never a bag - this was definitely a fluke. How did it get there, and what sort of protrusion did it snag so as to remain snagged? Will this bag be there for days, weeks, months from now?

There's my stop.

Furrow

The old man's general disposition over the course of his entire life is displayed via a prominent, permanent furrow, pressed deeply into the flesh on his forehead.

One could suppose that all he has ever done is frown, and that his only mood has been 'grumpy.'

But surely he must have smiled once. On his wedding day, perhaps, or after a good joke, or when winning $20 in the lottery?

Everybody must have a good day from time to time; at what sort of things could the world's grumpiest man smile at?

The King of the Bus

Normally I take two buses home, transferring to the second one downtown. For my second bus, I can get on a popular one that is usually packed, or else if the timing is right, I can get on an alternate bus that makes me walk a block more, but the bus is usually empty and the drive is much more scenic. This bus route is one of Winnipeg Transit's best kept secrets.

Today, my alternate bus gets to my stop first, so I jump on board. To my delight, it's completely empty (save the driver). With the fall chill morphing into a winter's nip, I sit in the middle of the very last row of seats to be closer to the engine's heat.


I stretch my arms out beside me, consuming much more space than necessary, and enjoy the rare moment of complete privacy on the city bus.

During my ride, a total of six other people get on the bus, and they all get off at stops well before mine, which is the last one on this route before the bus flips its sign and heads back the other way.

Aside from the repeated crescendo of the diesel engine, the bus is quiet. There is no chatter between the sparse passengers, no coughing, no overflowing iPod music, no ringing cell phones. Instead, the noises of the bus itself begin to fill the relative silence.

Big diesel engines vibrate a lot, and vibrations through a steel frame tend to cause everything that's threaded together to wiggle loose unless glued in place with Loctite. Including, apparently, the nuts & bolts used to hold the side panel on the seat in front of me, to my left. And when nuts loosen and fall off, the thin metal sheeting they previously held firmly in place becomes free to rattle against its frame, in perfect sync to the engine's vibrations.

It's especially loud when the bus is idling at a red light, and when it's at speed. Mercifully, when accelerating or decelerating, the vibration nearly vanishes, but this bus seems to hit a lot of red lights. RAT-AT-AT-AT-AT-ATTLE.

I stretch out with my leg and try to press against the sheet with my foot, but instead of merely accepting the pressure, the metal pops out the other direction like the lid of a Snapple bottle - with the accompanying snap/pop. I quickly draw my foot back, and catch a glimpse of the bus driver glancing up to his rear-view mirror to see what I'm doing to his bus. I try to pretend like nothing happened. Just a solo passenger, gazing out over his empty kingdom ahead.

The bus reaches the end of the route, and I rise and make my way to the front of the bus. Normally it will stop and sit for a few minutes to catch up to its schedule, and that's when I'd get off. Today, however, the driver must be behind, for he barrels right past the last stop and starts the reverse route immediately.

"I'll get off here," I tell him, gesturing at the upcoming stop.

"You've still got to pull the cord," he says.

"Sorry?" I say, somewhat confused. It's not like I interrupted another conversation with my verbal request.

"You've still got to pull the cord, so the bell rings," he repeats, oblivious to the absurdity of his comment. He stops anyway.

Here's my stop. Goodbye, my empty little kingdom.

"Do You Have the Time?"

My title today is the question the mid-30s native lady seated beside me asks.

I pull back my jacket sleeve and stretch my wrist out in front of her so she can read my analog watch herself. She nods and thanks me.

"I guess I could have just looked at it myself and told you," I offer. "But it always takes a few seconds to figure out the time. I miss my old digital watch. It was much easier, and it had a calculator and a calendar on it, which was really handy if I wanted to figure out what day of the week November 11th falls on, or something like that. Which I often need to do. But maybe that's just how I process the world."

She pauses, then lets out a slow, "O-K," inflected with an unspoken "whatever."

"I kinda need to wear this watch though, as my wife got it for me."

"Ah," she says, then elaborates. "I needed to know the time because I need to be at my nail salon before it closes. I don't know if I'll make it. I could maybe go to another place closer."

I notice a nail salon out the window as the bus pulls up to a stop to load a large group of passengers. "There's a place right there," I point out.

She seems hesitant. "Should I?" she wonders, almost getting up. "It's probably all Africans and they'll give me those long curvy nails."

"Rowr," I say, making a clawing gesture like a cat in a fight. She laughs. I add, "If you're more comfortable with your old place, I wouldn't risk somewhere new."

"But I've got to get my nails done before tonight, or I won't feel like a woman," she responds, as the bus pulls away from the stop.

"That's something I can't relate to," I say.

"Guys can still get manicures and pedicures. It doesn't mean you're gay."

"Oh, I know, it's probably good for my hands," I say, holding mine up and inspecting my cuticles. "I've just never seen the need to get one."

"You have nice hands," she says. "But I know this one guy who is real femmy. His parents are super-rich and he still lives with them. He plucks his eyebrows super-thin, and his girlfriend has $8000 implants."

"See, I really can't relate to that kind of thing," I reply. "That sort of living just seems shallow. I prefer people who are genuine and authentic."

"Mine are real," she says, opening her jacket for me to get a closer look at her... ahem... chest area. My peripheral vision confirms that she is wearing a shirt, but I keep firm custody of my eyes. "Oh, you can look," she says. "I know you're married, but it doesn't matter."

"I'm not going to look," I say, laughing to mask my slight discomfort. "You're making me blush."

She laughs too.

There's my stop. Thank goodness.

Swagger

I'm seated right behind the rear door on the bus, against the window.

My stereotypes kick in as soon as I see him swagger onto the bus; he's in his mid 20s, white, with an angry aura and an angrier goatee. Tall and thin, he's dressed all in black with his hoody up, and as he gets closer to where I am I can smell the reek of cigarettes on him. A large backpack hangs loosely off his back.

He stops right in front of the back door, and is completely oblivious to everybody around him trying to exit through it at the next stop; both his bulk and his intimidating aura present a barrier to those trying to get around him. Eventually they get by.

A few stops later, he reaches directly in front of me to pull the stop cord hanging by my window. But his angle is all wrong, and he can't get the right leverage to activate the ding so he gives up.

I reach up and pull the cord for him.

He meets my eyes, smiles, and says, "Thanks." Suddenly his dark cloud seems to have diminished a bit.

There's his stop.

Crossword

She's middle-aged, with shoulder length brown hair and tastefully selected eyeglasses. The top of her pink turtleneck is the only clothing showing that isn't the black of her leather jacket, pants, and pointy shoes. A silver purse is slung over her left shoulder.

On her lap is a oft-reused green liquor-mart nylon bag - the only part of her ensemble which isn't trendy and new. She has the Winnipeg Sun folded open on top of it and is doing the crossword puzzle with a simple blue Bic pen.

Her focus on the puzzle is clear, but it's not all encompassing. She gets distracted by various noises on the bus and frequently glances up to see how close she is to her stop.

She finishes the puzzle in pretty good time, unfolds the paper, rolls it up and stuffs it into the nylon bag.

There's her stop.

Hot Seat

I'm in a brand new bus shelter waiting for my connecting bus home. It, like the other new shelters I've seen, has an uncomfortable-looking perforated stainless steel bench.

That'll be nasty cold in winter, I think to myself. Who on earth would want to sit on those? But then I overhear a young lady, sitting on the bench on this nippy Autumn evening, exclaim to her standing friend, "They're hot!"

I look a little more closely and see that there is an electric heater running the full length underneath the bench. Being a man who enjoys warmth, I try it out - it is indeed comfortably warm, a stark contrast to the sharp twang of the October air. I find myself relaxing, leaning back against the warm glass wall, the tension of a full day and a long walk slipping away as the heat radiates up my spine.

Ah, phooey. There's my bus.

A Meditation

As my bus zips down the bus-only lane, I gaze out my window in mild amusement at the sole occupants of the vehicles backed up for blocks in rush hour traffic. I suppress a desire to wave at them, but only barely.

There is a perception among the driving public that the bus is full of poor people, dirty blue collar Joes, and screaming kids. Perhaps that isn't entirely untrue, but I do see a fair share of professionals on the bus too, in their suits with the briefcases, checking email on their Blackberries.

Either way, taking the bus is like a great big secret that I'm afraid to share too much with the drivers out there, for were they to realize how liberating it truly is, I'm sure my bus rides would be much less comfortable.

Yet perhaps I delude myself: some of them undoubtedly think I'm taking the bus because I have to, and would quickly opt out of it were I of more sufficient means. It is true that the financial benefits to riding the bus are quite appealing for our simple lifestyle, but my desire to ride the bus outweighs my need to, by a heavy margin. I get time to think, time to read, time to pray, and time to watch the world.

I signed up for this experience, and I'm loving it. For rush-hour drivers, every day is a crapshoot: they have far less predictability in their arrival times than I do as a bus patron. I'll take the predictability over the chaos and high gas prices any day.

There's my stop.