Thursday, January 4, 2018

Experience the Bus

I figured you might want to know how my conversation with NordicTrack on Facebook ended.

Yesterday, I received this message:

I am sorry but with our machines we do not have the option to do that, thank you!

And this morning, I wrote back:

Please pass this message up to your engineering department. It would not be a difficult challenge and it would help the environment. Thank you. 

I have to tell you that the whole thing made me feel like an idiot. I would have appreciated a detailed reason why an engineer wouldn't put that kind of technology into exercise equipment, to capture the energy that is put into a spinning flywheel. The person I got when I sent this message was not that guy.

I think I understand the complications with a treadmill. Every time I'm on a treadmill, I feel as though I'm going to fall off the end of it. I can't quite keep up. That's probably the idea, to push me. Granted, the most time I spent on a treadmill was under the supervision of a cardiac technologist while doing a stress test and before that a short stint with a personal trainer. Personal trainers seem to need to keep you off balance, don't they? I fell off that thing at least twice. 

But my mind keeps going back to all that energy a person exerts while on a treadmill. Would it be possible to capture the up and down motion in the drop of each foot? 

What this climate change dilemma needs is more engineers to engineer the hell out of it.  

The other machines should have been easy. If there's already a flywheel, half the work is done for the engineering team. Add some copper windings, a couple of magnets, and you have current, right?

Or did I mess that idea up too? All in all, the whole thing made me feel like an idiot. Maybe I am. Probably I am. But at least I'm thinking about it, trying to do something to battle the great inertia of 7.442 billion people marching into climate change oblivion.

Yesterday, I took another challenge. I rode the bus into Seattle.

I've only ridden a bus five or six times since I was a teenager when I got my license and a set of car keys. Every single time I ride the bus, I get nervous.

Am I going to the right place?
What if I get sick? How will I get home?
Is this the right bus?
Will I get off at the right stop?
How far will I have to walk when I get there?
What if my phone dies?
What if I don't have the right change?
What if I have to pee?

You have to admit that those are valid questions for newbie bus riders. 

The first time I rode the Seattle Metro, I researched the hell out of it and planned my ride online before I left. I recommend this. I was scheduled for jury duty in Seattle and I made a trial run to make sure I'd get to the right place. I did.

It was fun. A stop for coffee, time to look around, and back home on the bus, right?

Well, the buses mostly run into Seattle in the morning and out of Seattle in the afternoon. They don't just keep circling around and around. How do they do that? Some nice bus driver told me which bus to get on to get back to the park-and-ride where my car was parked. I went home on Sound Transit.

Whew!

So far, I've never gotten sick, too lost, gotten off at the wrong stop, or failed to have the right money for the bus. Once, I stepped off at the wrong park-and-ride on the way home, but I realized my mistake right away and simply stepped back on before the doors closed. See, I am an idiot sometimes. I use the map on my phone to find landmarks and once it didn't work in a tunnel so I had to walk back up the stairs a couple of times to look at the map and go back down to where I needed to go. 

All in all, riding the bus is an adventure for me.

Hey, I love my car. I really do. When I lived five miles outside of New York City, I used to drive my car into that mess rather than learn the trains, the subways, or the buses. I didn't want to miss the last run for the night and be stuck wandering around the city until they started running again at 5am.  I was proud that I could drive in New York City. Those taxi drivers are tough nuts and I could manage among them.

But it wasn't at all environmentally friendly. One woman in her own car, driving into a city of eight and a half million people. Eight and a half million cars would never work. It was hard enough getting in and out with those of us who were ignorant enough to try on a Friday afternoon. Sometimes, that twenty minute drive turned into three hours.

Once I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I had the excuse that I lived in the middle of nowhere. No buses stopped anywhere near my house. I had to drive to get absolutely anywhere, even to the bus stop. 

Oh, I used to take turns with Mike biking home from work every other day when we both worked in the same town. We wanted to show up at work and not be a sweaty mess, so we figured that one would drop the other off at work and someone would bike home. It worked for a while, but it was a fucking hazard. Drivers don't see bikes. And worse, every week some asshole would roll down his window, drive by, and yell some insult at me.

"Cow!"

"Wide load!"

"Get some exercise, pig!"

That one always got to me. There I was, trying to get some exercise and some asshole sitting in a car was yelling at me to get some exercise. I was supposed to be beautiful while I biked? Just for him? The worst night was when a bunch of people in a car all rolled down their windows and barked at me. All of it got to me and eventually, I stopped biking home on my road. I also stopped working in the same town as Mike. I still dropped him off and then ran my errands so he kept it up longer than I did, but the second time he got run off the road by an inattentive driver, he stopped. He was finished.

Then, I was an unrelenting driver until very recently. Those bus rides were a challenge for me.

In my car, I feel at home. In my car, I feel safe. I can stop anywhere I want. I don't have to mingle with strangers in my car. I can make a detour. I can be spontaneous. I can go straight home. I love my car.

But that's part of our problem, isn't it? 

We love our cars.

So yesterday, I drove five minutes to the park-and-ride, waited twenty minutes because I missed the bus, and I went into the Seattle Art Museum to see the Andrew Wyeth retrospective. It was awesome!

I saw things I wouldn't have seen from my car, little brass animals on huge flower pots on Seneca Street. I saw how small Smith Tower seemed next to all the other buildings. I saw the golden afternoon light on Elliot Bay. I saw people, beautiful people, ugly people, bored people, tired people, and one sweet guy on a bike on Second Avenue who winked at me. I know I'm getting old now when guys have begun to wink at me again. There was an Indian man on the bus with the most gorgeous dimple in his chin. There was a sweet-looking woman reading a library book. I wanted to ask her if it was good. There were a bunch of people working not to make eye contact with anyone on the bus. I was an anomaly there, looking all around me and not bored by the experience. When I get old and lonely, I can ride the bus during rush hour so I can sit close to someone and feel their warmth through our layers of clothes. If I'm old enough, someone might wink at me or at least smile.

Still, when I got back into my car afterward, I let out a long breath. Had I been holding it for that long, the whole time I was exposed to the world? 

That's the challenge. I'm going to do it again soon, go somewhere else. Experience the bus in all it's humanity.

Thank you for listening, jules 

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