The serpent in the 65th Street station

The light rail train emerges from behind the river of Highway 50 traffic and glides down the bridge over the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, a snake slithering into view.

The No. 82 bus is pulling to a stop in the bus parking lot across Q Street from the 65th Street light rail station. I'm standing at the side door. It is 8:52 a.m.

I've been here before, surprised at my good fortune. I was such a naive fool. But eventually I learned my lesson.

As I exit the bus I can hear the distant clang of the train's bells, arrogantly announcing its arrival. The braggart.

The serpent is trying to temp me, to make me believe that this unique juncture of an early bus and a late train is somehow more than just the intersection of a coincidence, a winning lottery ticket.

I won't be deceived, I reassure myself. I won't believe that my arrival in the station just as the train slows to a stop is anything more than an accident.

Swallowed in the belly of the serpent, I am ever vigilant to hold back those random, accidental moments of happiness, ever watchful for that possible disappointment.

OSS on the bus

Finished another book while riding to and from work on the bus: "OSS: The secret history of America's first central intelligence agency," written by R. Harris Smith.

I got on the subject after watching "The Good Shepherd," which covers some of the same ground. The book was in a pile of books I've been meaning to read.

The copy I read was published in 1972, shortly after the Pentagon Papers had been in the news. This book is, in many ways, a tribute to the "liberal" roots of the agency, which included a young Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who worked as a political analyst. A great deal of idealism infused the effort to create the nation's first spy agency.

The organization created by William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan was staffed with an amazing pool of talent. When one considers the narrow participation today in the Iraq War -- limited as it is almost exclusively to service members and their families -- it is difficult to imagine a war with genuinely broad support. Here is just one example of the caliber of people recruited to staff the early OSS:

"The Secret Intelligence Branch required special care. The SI Branch chief in London, Princeton political scientist William Maddox, was brought to Caserta to replace a Bank of America official as overseer of espionage operations in the Theater. Dr. Milton Katz, a Harvard law professor, left his post as counsel at the War Production Board in Washington to become Maddox's deputy.

"A special SI division was created for central European operations. An advertising executive of General Foods Corporation, Howard Chapin, was given responsibility for sending intelligence agents to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany."

The book provides a wealth of useless but fun trivia. In the category of people who became famous for entirely unrelated things, there is this:

"OSS intelligence files at Chungking (conscientiously maintained by a jolly amateur chef named Julia McWilliams Child) bulged with reports about the incompetence of the Chinese military command."

But the book is serious history and one feature I found the most valuable was the author's efforts to footnote what each of the major players did after their work in the OSS. For instance:

"OSS intelligence was collected from the Arab world by Dr. Stephen Penrose Jr. of the Near East College Association and his 27-year-old assistant, Cal Tech history instructor Kermit Roosevelt (a grandson of the "Rough Rider" Preisdent)."

The footnote for Roosevelt explains:

"Roosevelt engineered the CIA coup against Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, left the CIA to become vice-president for governmental relations of Gulf Oil, 1958-64, and is now a partner in a Washington public relations firm that represents, among other international clients, the government of Iran."

Obviously, not everyone who worked in the OSS and stayed to work with the CIA was a liberal idealist seeking self-determination for the world's people.

No history of "Wild Bill" Donovan's OSS would be complete without an example of the bold, innovative plans developed by these really brainy people as they searched for the means to defeat the evil Axis powers.

"Not to be outdone by London, a group of OSS psychoanalysts proposed an incredible operation based on the premise that the Nazi totalitarian state would disintegrate if only its leader could be demoralized. After conducting a long-range psychological profile of Hitler's personality, this group decided the Fueher could be undone by exposing him to vast quantities of pornography. The OSS men collected the finest library of German smut ever assembled in the United States. The material was to be dropped by plane in the area surrounding Hitler's headquarters on the assumption that the Fuehrer would step outside, pick up some bit of it and immediately be thrown into paroxysms of madness. But the effort was in vain. The Army Air Corps Colonel sent as liason to the pornography-collectors stormed out of his first meeting with them. He cursed Donovan's maniacs and swore he would not risk the life of a single airman for such an insane boondoggle."

Transitarian diet and exercise

"You get a little exercise in the morning, huh?"

I was boarding the bus, and it took a step or two before I figured out what the bus driver meant.

"Yep," I said. I flashed my bus pass and a smile and moved to the rear of the bus to take my regular seat.

It's nice to have a regular driver, and especially a friendly one. It makes the Transitarian diet that much more enjoyable.

I'm also enjoying the benefits of the Gmaps Pedometer, an online means of measuring how much you walk using a Google Maps interface.

As the driver had noticed, I don't always take the bus stop closest to my house, a distances of 0.0415 miles. Instead, I walk to a point two stops later, which Gmaps Pedometer says is 0.202 miles away, and wait.

As I've mentioned in previous posts about Transitarian exercise, I also have a choice of how much to walk on my way to work.

If I take the No. 30 bus from Sac State to downtown and remember to get off at 22nd and L (more than once I've missed my stop due to my book reading), the walk to work is 0.48 miles. If I go to the end of the No. 82 bus line and take light rail from the 65th Street station, the walk from the 23rd Street station to my office is 0.1951 miles. And on those mornings when I'm looking for a little exercise and I get off at 29th Street, the walk to work is 0.6966 miles.

This weekend I was playing with Gmaps Pedometer and mapped out a 2.4925 mile route from my home to the Starbucks at Watt and Kings Way. I walked there, enjoyed a coffee and then coordinated my return trip with the weekend schedule for the No. 82 bus. An excellent Transitarian weekend adventure.

Now, if only I could combine this nifty exercise with a sensible diet.

Cause and effect

As I was reading, I looked up and caught a glimpse of tousled gray hair just visible in the window on the sidewalk side of the bus. Then I saw a hand raised and then lowered. I went back to my book.

The bus was stopped at Watt and El Camino and had just finished boarding several passengers. The front door hissed shut and the bus pulled away from the curb.

"Hey, this old lady needs the bus," the woman seated across from me at the back of the bus yelled. "Stop, this old lady needs the bus."

Outside, the elderly lady with the gray hair raised her hand again as she continued her slow progress toward the bus stop.

"She's late for this stop," the driver responded, but then he pulled back to the curb. He opened the door and lowered the bus to make it easier for the woman to climb aboard.

"I'm a little late today," the woman said as she slowly shuffled onto the bus. She showed her bus pass to the driver and took a seat in the front.

After the bus was under way again, I had a twinge of guilt. Why didn't I make an effort to alert the driver that he had another passenger? This reminded me of the gentleman on the bus who had raced from his seat to help a woman carrying an infant and lugging a large stroller.

The woman who had alerted the driver about the old lady was looking out the window and singing along with her headphones. Her singing, for lack of a better word to describe the noise, was loud enough to disturb my reading on the other side of the bus. OK, I thought to myself, she helped the old lady, she deserves praise for that, but she wasn't even close to carrying a tune, which moved her noise from disturbing to painful to hear.

"Hey, there's a five-dollar bill on the sidewalk," the woman said loudly to no one in particular. "Man, I could really use that five dollars."

The bus was stopped in traffic on Watt, waiting to turn right onto Butano.

"Hey, could you open the door so I could get that five-dollar bill?" she shouted toward the driver.

The side door hissed open and the woman dashed outside. She was back in her seat at the back of the bus before the traffic on Watt started moving, happily folding the $5 bill and putting it into her backpack.

As the bus continued on its way to Sac State, the woman called a friend to tell her of her good fortune.

At one point in the conversation, she said, "What you put into the universe you get back."

I agreed, silently to myself. A transitarian rewards program, perhaps.

Bus Driver Appreciation Day

Never one to avoid disaster when I can invite it, I decided to try the No. 82 bus that leaves American River College at 8:04 a.m. After all, things went so well yesterday, maybe my fortune has changed.

And, sure enough, when I boarded I was pleased to see my favorite driver. He's my favorite because he is the only driver who appears capable of negotiating the lengthy route and arriving at Sac State in time for me to catch the No. 30 bus scheduled to depart at 8:52.

Now, on occasion, even this driver has had trouble making the collection. There was the famous karma payback trip that featured an old bus and two time-consuming wheelchair pickups and crowds and crowds of Sac State students. Days like that are controlled by the gods. Woe be unto him who angers them.

Anyway, today we hit the timing mark at Mission and Engel at the scheduled 8:12. The driver then picked up a wheelchair rider at one stop and still made the timing marks at both Watt and El Camino and at Kaiser Hospital. That flip ramp on the new buses really speeds the process of loading and offloading wheelchairs.

The driver off-loaded the wheelchair rider at the Winterstein Adult Center, waited for her to cross the street and then raced on.

The No. 82 arrived at Sac State just two minutes behind schedule at 8:47. The No. 30 bus arrived at 8:53 and I was walking to work at 22nd and L streets by 9:11.

I will admit that besides the help of the transit deities, the driver also benefited from a drop in Sac Student ridership, but he deserves a Bus Driver Appreciation Day award.

Sweet lemonade

It's late, but I feel compelled to point out that today's scheduled trip worked magnificently. The route I tested yesterday -- No. 82 to American River College, No. 1 to Watt/I-80 and downtown on light rail -- worked perfectly. The No. 1 bus even made it to the light rail station with plenty of time for the connection with the train.

I arrived at Cathral Square 40 minutes before my appointment, as expected. I then had plenty of time to go to the wrong high-rise and get redirected to the correct high-rise and then arrive at my appointment with time to spare.

Then, when I was done, it was even easier to catch a bus on J Street back to Sac State and then home on the No. 82 bus.

Transit may not work for everyone in Sacramento, especially for those living in the suburbs of Carmichael and Citrus Heights, but when everything clicks like it did today, it's just sweet.

Making lemonade from whine

Whine should age with a cork jammed in its throat, bottled. Then, when the whine's time is right, it can be transformed into lemonade and sipped on the porch.

Consider this post from back on April 9. Whine, whine, whine. I had to get in my car and drive to the Watt/I-80 light rail station because Sacramento Regional Transit couldn't get me to 20th and J streets at 9 a.m. Whine, whine, whine.

Put a cork in it!

This weekend I expected to pour more whine into that bottle when I started exploring options for getting to 12th and K streets before 10 a.m. tomorrow. I even started with a little test Sunday to see how long it would take to walk from my house to Auburn Boulevard, where I could catch the No. 1 bus to the Watt/I-80 station. I figured I'd have to give myself about 30 minutes for the 1 mile walk to be on the safe side.

So then I checked infoweb.sacrt.com, RT's trip planning Web service, and discovered that I didn't have to walk any farther than the bus stops on either side of the street in front of my house. In fact, I had a choice of leaving at 8:26 on the No. 82 bus going to American River College, transferring to the No. 1 bus and arriving at the station in 21 minutes, or I could take the No. 82 bus at 8:39 in the other direction and transfer at Watt to the No. 84 bus, arriving at the light rail station in 23 minutes. The train trip to Cathedral Square takes about 20 minutes. And if that wasn't enough, I could take the 8:39 No. 82 bus to Sac State, get on the No. 30 bus and arrive at 12th and L streets at 9:42 a.m.

Now I had more options than I knew what to do with. If I were commuting daily to this destination, I'd use the 82 to 30 combination and walk the block to 12th and K streets. But tomorrow I need to find an office in a building I've never been in before and so I need some extra time.

Today I tried out the 8:26 departure route. I was out at my bus stop at 8:21, unsure whether the No. 82 would be early or late. It turned out to be three minutes late. I was on the 82 at 8:29 and at American River College at 8:35 a.m. The No. 1 bus was scheduled to arrive at 8:39, but I didn't board until 8:46. The bus arrived at the light rail station 8:56 a.m., eight minutes late, but still in time for me to make it down the stairs and to the station before the 8:59 a.m. train departed. The train passed through Cathedral Square at 9:20 a.m., which means that even if I missed the 8:59 train I'd still have plenty of time to walk from 11 and K streets back to 12th Street and find the office where I have my appointment.

Pour me some lemonade.

Transitarian mental health

I finished Richard Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar" Saturday while drinking a coffee at the Starbucks on Watt Avenue near the wasteland created by the death of Tower Books and Records.

This is a fun, if odd, book:

The night was cool and the stars were red. I walked down by the Watermelon Works. That's where we process the watermelons into sugar. We take the juice from the watermelons and cook it down until there's nothing left but sugar, and then we work it into the shape of this thing that we have: our lives.

As part of a transitarian mental health exercise, I had gathered up my book of three Brautigan works and a bus schedule and started walking. Since the 82 bus only runs every hour, I made it from my house to Watt Avenue on foot. Three bus routes cover the part of Watt I needed to traverse and so it was just a matter of waiting. I was headed for Emigh Hardware on El Camino with a planned stop at Starbucks. It was a nice way to kill a couple of hours.

Richard Brautigan's writing has a wonderful way of evoking emotions and memories in simple, almost childlike images:

We walked back to iDEATH, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.

At the end of the book is a brief biography of Richard Brautigan. Sitting in Starbucks, I wrote the last sentence as a poem and then I added my interpretation. The result looked something like this:

DRIVEN TO DRINK in a small silver car, he rode in the back seat
AND DESPAIR rode in the front. He couldn't see the sun through Despair.
HE COMMITTED SUICIDE in the dark with a gun. Outside
IN BOLINAS the sun shone brightly.
CALIFORNIA was a state of mind
AT THE AGE of Aquarius, but not in September 1984. Nothing
OF FORTY-NINE years of his life made him imagine more.

Eventually I made my purchase at Emigh and made my way by bus and by foot back home, my mental state much improved.

A short update -- about this tall

Is May "Random Driver Month" at Sacramento Regional Transit? Or maybe May 21 to 25 was "Random Driver Week"?

I miss my regular drivers on the 82 bus from American River College to the 65th Street station. Come back, please.

I have been trying for three weeks to leave for work on the 8:04 a.m. bus rather than the 8:34 bus. I summarized this effort in the Art of Getting Settled post back in April. The problem is that I can't seem to arrive a half-hour earlier.

The earlier bus is a favorite with Sac State students. While the bus a half-hour later races along the final couple of miles of the route, the earlier bus must make frequent stops. And when the bus has to load and off-load a wheelchair rider, as it did today, the schedule just flies out the window. It's a bit disappointing, especially since Sac State's Hornet Express bus service could sweep up much of this crowd.

The first week I had a regular driver who was obviously experienced with the route. More often than not, the bus arrived at Sac State close enough to on-time that I could make the 30 line connection downtown. Then the driver spent several days training someone and now he's gone. This week I tried the early bus yesterday and today. I had a different driver each day. Neither could make the connection. Yesterday, the 30 bus was pulling out as the 82 arrived, and today the 30 was already at the Carlson and J Street light when the 82 finally reached Sac State. At least today I had the presence of mind to stay on the bus until 65th Street, where I only had to wait two minutes to catch the train downtown.

I suppose this takes a little of the rose color tint off the transitarian classes. Darn, it's just not a perfect world.

Serving trout with mayonaise on the bus

I finished "Trout Fishing in America," it's only 112 pages, and I wanted to put it aside. I decided to take the 82 bus line that leaves American River College at 8:04 a.m., the dangerous "payback" bus. And I also opted for the Transitarian Diet two-stop walk to be sure the mystery woman wouldn't be a part of the story.

The cellphone alarm went off at 8:03 a.m. and I was waiting for the bus at 8:07. By 8:10 I saw the bus turn from Eastern onto Engle and lumber toward me, slowly rolling side to side as it settled in its new course.

But I couldn't put aside "Trout Fishing in America" because it is bound to Richard Brautigan's "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster" in the same way today is bound to yesterday.

As I settled in the back of the bus and got my book out of my backpack, the bus arrived at Mission and Engle. There were no passengers waiting to board. The bus stop shelter was empty. But the driver stopped anyway and waited for a full minute before continuing.

A moment of silence? Do whales mourn their dead the way elephants mourn? I didn't see a memorial to the 82 whale, now long gone as though it had never existed. Maybe only the drivers and the buses have eyes for them.

By the time the bus arrived at Kaiser Hospital we were two minutes behind schedule. "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster" is a collection of poetry. The title comes from this poem:

The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.

The poem is undated but the collection was originally published in 1968, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Comstock laws that banned contraception.

As the bus pulled away from Kaiser I found this floating among the poems:

The Symbol

When I was hitch-hiking down to Big Sur,
Moby Dick stopped and picked me up. He was driving
a truckload of sea gulls to San Luis Obispo.

"Do you like being a truckdriver better than you
do a whale?" I asked.

"Yeah," Moby Dick said. "Hoffa is a lot better
to us whales than Captain Ahab ever was.

The old fart."

And perhaps after Hoffa went missing the whales felt safer with Division 256 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, AFL-CIO.

I finished "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster" before the bus arrived at Sac State, but I didn't want to start Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar." So I started reading the poems again. Reading poetry twice doesn't seem as odd as reading a novel twice. You need space between novels -- say, 37 years -- in order to really discover what you have forgotten.

The bus arrived at Sac State at 8:52, seven minutes late. I watched my connecting 30 line bus pull away from the curb as the 82 bus came to a stop. As I was about to step from the bus I could hear yelling and see flailing arms in the crowd of passengers exiting the front of the bus. Once off the bus I walked to the front in time to see a very angry Sac State student very loudly and with much profanity suggest to the driver that he should do a better job of keeping the bus on its schedule. He finished with a two-handed, middle-finger salute and stormed away.

I could have stayed on the 82 bus and taken light rail to work, but the 30 line runs every 15 minutes. The next 30 bus was scheduled to depart at 9:07. I decided I might as well start reading "In Watermelon Sugar." The book begins:

In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.

While I was reading, a "NOT IN SERVICE" bus arrived and, as if my magic, was transformed into a 30. I boarded and took a seat in the rear.

When the bus arrived at 29th and L Street for its driver change, 40 or so kindergartners and a half-dozen adults were waiting on the sidewalk, held together with colored yarn. I moved to an empty seat near the front while a teacher negotiated the children's entry. Then the driver opened the floodgates and the miniature people flowed into the bus and all the way to the back and then back toward the front as every open space filled. I got up again and moved to a place where I could stand near the front. The wave of kids quickly filled my empty seat. Eddies of kids swirled around me, settling in seats reserved for the elderly.

Once the flood had found its level, the bus made its way carefully down L Streets so as not to spill its load. The sound of the school of children that filled the bus reminded me of a babbling stream of cold mountain water cascading over rocks on its way to the ocean.

I couldn't leave "Trout Fishing in America" today. I'm sure there were trout on the bus.

Maybe tomorrow. For now, you will have to read "Trout Fishing in America" yourself in order to understand why this blog post must end with the word mayonaise.