I don't know if I've ever mentioned before how many blind or visually-impaired people ride some of the same buses I do.  This is because the Kentucky School for the Blind is on Frankfort Ave. in my old Clifton neighborhood; consequently there are quite a few blind people who live nearby and ride the bus to and from school or to other places.  All of the buses I normally take go by or near the School.  On my ride this morning, a young man with a seeing-eye dog (a yellow lab) boarded at the School for the Blind and rode into town at the front of the bus.

I'm always fascinated at the rapport between someone and his or her guide dog.  It's a good thing the blind can't see me staring because I watch to see how easily the dog takes to his new environment, leads his human to a seat and then sits patiently next to him.  They seem so calm and well-behaved, totally unlike how I imagine my own dogs would be in the same situation.  I know they're selected for even temperament (the dogs, I mean), and extensively trained to be nonchalant about all the sights and sounds (and sniffable crotches) all around that would drive most dogs crazy.  But still, it touches me how close that bond between man and his best friend is, how a dog offers not only companionship, but also mobility and freedom for someone who might not otherwise have it.  There'll be a few extra ear scratches tonight for Mabel and Alfie when I get home.

As I walked down Deputy Drive in Stylish Acres to the bus stop, I ran into our next door neighbor, Mindy #1, walking her dog Molly*.  Molly, a tan lab, wagged her tail at me (Mindy did not), and looked so friendly I had to stop and ask her if she was having a good walk.  She humored me with some kisses and more tail-wagging, with an indulgent look on her face that said, "Duh, is there such a thing as a bad walk?  Two-legged freak!"  The reason I call her mommy Mindy #1 is because another woman, I presume an old friend of hers and fellow dee-vor-say, has moved in and her name is also Mindy.  Mindy #2 also answers to Drunk Mindy, but that's another story.

I caught the reliable #31 within a minute, barely having time to get my mp3 player interfaced with my aural receptors before the bus stopped.  Today would be a music day on my morning ride, as I didn't really feel like reading without having my early morning cup of Joe (and if you've seen Joe, you'd know why he puts a little hitch in my get-up).

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I get on the bus this morning, and there are two high school boys talking, like, about John Lennon being so, like, cool on the day he was shot, like he knew it was gonna happen.  I start reading my book, but then I eavesdrop a few minutes later and they were, like, talking about economic policy in Britain during the Thatcher years (before they were born).  Soon the topic turns to literature, like, A Clockwork Orange (with its bastardized version of the English language, one of their favorite words during the conversation), written by Anthony Burgess.  Then I learned that, like, Burgess was this, like, scholar, and one of them, like, saw an interview with him on YouTube, and he, like, also plays music.  Then they were talking about other, like, dystopian sci-fi novels.  A couple of intellectuals in the making, I'd say.  They're, like, waaay more well-read than I was at that age.

I boarded the #31 this morning down in my old neighborhood, after driving to work yesterday.  The bus was stopped at the railroad crossing, while sleepy commuters mostly sat in stony silence.  All, my bleary eyes noticed, except Marilyn and .... wait, is that Samantha?!  Why yes it is her, sans ponytail, a new woman risen from the ashes of last week's heartache!  I had worried about her last week, after not seeing her for a few days.  And where is the cause of all her misery, that ruiner of reputations, that rakish Gustav?  He was not on the bus.  In my absence, I imagine Marilyn sat him down over a slice of her homemade zucchini bread and gave him a good talking-to about the gentlemanly thing to do.  Yes, Marilyn would do that.  Matriarch of the Middletown bus, ruling with a firm hand and homemade confections.

So off we go, after waiting a few minutes to see it the stopped train would move.  It didn't, so the driver takes an alternate route used by the #19, the other bus I regularly ride.  We turn up Pope Street -- a Dickensian, narrow, steep little street of shotgun houses that takes us back on track to Frankfort Ave.  We wait at the light to turn, across from the old firehouse, but there are no firemen out in those tight polyester blue shorts practicing with their hoses.  **sigh**  Perhaps another time.

Down Frankfort and Story Ave. we pass by the "fragrant" bacon factory.   Hard to believe something that smells so good can smell that bad before being processed.  Behind me, the little Mexican guy, who is always on this bus and gets off downtown, sneezes.  I panic.  Swine flu!!!  But I compose myself.  I've got the genes of centuries of hardy Germans swimming in my cell nuclei, so I don't worry.

On the last 5 minutes of my ride, I notice a woman three seats back from Marilyn who could be her cousin or even her sister.  Same build, same impeccable fashion sense, almost the same hair, wearing a beaded necklace that seems a little bit too garish for Marilyn.  Definitely her sister, the black sheep of the family -- and obviously not on speaking terms.  I'll call her Carolyn.  Was there a falling out over the Samantha-Gustav incident, or does this chill predate recent events.  I'll try to find out in the coming weeks....

The bus spits me out next door to my building, and I trudge upstairs to the fifth floor and my first cup of coffee of the day.

I caught the bus again this morning, after delays yesterday due to our freakish flash flooding.  Our main library branch suffered over a million dollars of damage when the basement, which contained computers, thousands of books and the library's garage, flooded.

But I noticed Samantha -- you may remember her from this post -- was not on the bus today.  (I don't know her well enough to call her "Sam.")  I looked around, though, and Marilyn and Gustav were chatting away at the front of the bus, as if their friend were not absent. 

Slightly reassured, I zoned back into my mp3 player, until John Waite's "Missing You" started playing, and it hit me:  Gustav, that dark-haired debonair Lothario, broke her heart after a sordid one-night stand, and she's either avoiding him by taking a different bus, or she's so distraught she's staying home altogether, even her hair too sad to be put up into that chipper pony tail.  But does Marilyn know?  If so, why is she giving Gustav the time of day (7:35 AM).  Don't women stick together in times like these, or is she more like Sigourney Weaver's character to Samantha's Melanie Griffith in Working Girl?

Perhaps I'll see her on the bus going home; he's never on that one -- probably staying late at work to flirt with some new conquest.  If I did, maybe I'll tell her -- in my best Sally Jesse Raphael voice -- that I understand, and that if she needs someone to talk to, I'm there for her.  Or would that be presumptuous?

I wait at the bus stop in a tropical monsoon this morning.  I'm back on the #31, but drenched from backpack to hiking shoes.  This is by far the most upscale bus of the three I usually take, mostly full of middle class professionals from the 'burbs.  I'm riding from Kelly's house this morning in Stylish Acres, an inner suburb of prosperous 1950's Cape Cod homes.  I guess I'm a nonconformist by refusing to answer the door wearing pearls.

I sit behind a 30-something man in a blue dress shirt, his raincoat draped over the partition in front of his seat while he reads the paper -- the Sports section, or maybe the Business page?  Ahead, towards the front of the bus, two women I recognize from many rides on this bus are chatting.  Let's call them "Samantha" and "Marilyn."

Samantha (who I'm sure goes by "Sam" to her closest friends) has long brown hair in a ponytail (see what I mean -- "Samantha" wouldn't wear a ponytail after the age of 18, would she?) and is texting something while talking with the lady in front of her.  Marilyn, a 40ish woman with sensibly short salt-and-pepper hair and glasses, is wearing a red raincoat.  Marilyn is usually very tastefully dressed: a professional working woman (there's my image of Mary Tyler Moore again!) in crisp pantsuits, but she seems friendly enough.  She's almost always the center of a clique at the front of the bus talking and laughing with some of the other riders, and she must be one of the last of that group to get off downtown.  This bus does in fact seem friendlier than others, as riders say hello to each other -- people they must see almost every day -- and talk, instead of getting a transfer to their own thoughts.

I sip my coffee as the bus zooms down Frankfort Ave., splashing up stormwater on the side of the road.  I think about all the neighborhoods we pass through, and how to tell them apart.  From Stylish Acres, we pass through the commercial heart of Saint Matthews, another inner suburb that was once the center of potato production early last century, where the mostly locally owned businesses are next door to nationwide bank branches, Starbucks, and fast food chains.  Down Frankfort Ave. we go through Crescent Hill, an older neighborhood of 1920's Victorians, Arts & Craft bungalows and solid-looking Four-Square homes.  Here we pass the Louisville Water Company filtration plant, across from the reservoir.  I can remember my grandpa taking me there to walk around the reservoir when I was a kid.  Now, especially since Sept. 11, it's surrounded by a high fence.

We continue west down Frankfort Ave, on the right side railroad tracks, on the left the beginning of a small commercial area of consignment shops, coffeehouses, and specialty stores.  This blends into my own old neighborhood of Clifton, with an older, grittier, yet gentrified look.  Bars and restaurants compete with coffee shops, antique stores, and even a mechanic and tire store. 

In Clifton, a man and (I assume) his elderly father get off, while another rider patiently waits to board.  The new rider, let's call him "Gustav" because he has an exotic European look, I've seen many times on the bus and walking on the streets near where I work.  In fact he once flirted with a girl I work with while we were out at lunch.  I couldn't believe how rudely he ignored me, despite my flirting  back on her behalf! 

Anyway, the bus is pretty full now as we head downtown, with better brakes -- reassuring in this rain, which is now letting up.  At the front of the bus, Marilyn's coffee klatch has some new members, including Gustav (that attention whore), and "Leon," an animated older man whose doctor still won't let him drive.  I secretly want to be invited into their group -- but never fear, gentle reader, not until next week!

Lots of bus riders -- most I would say -- are utilitarian about it.  It gets them from point A to B if you don't have a car or don't want to pay to park downtown, or are eco-conscious or whichever of several reasons.  But then you have the group I see today.  I don't remember having interesting conversations, or even just small talk, to pass the time when I drive to work.  Something about our modern car culture usually precludes this democratic gathering on a TARC bus, with people from different neighborhoods and socioeconomic backgrounds getting to and from work, or the doctor, and acknowledging each other's existence.

This morning I missed my usual bus from home, and waited for the next available one after a train blocked traffic for several minutes.  All aboard the #15!  It was an entirely different cast of characters than I'm used to, like when a hit sitcom introduces the wacky family next door or cousin Maude before spinning off a new show.

But this group was pretty quiet, with most people sitting reading a book or the paper, or listening to their iPod.  And it was summer vacation, so no sassy kids.  Maude Findlay they were not.  It was mostly professional looking people who worked downtown.

After a few stops, past the State School for the Blind, we slow down while approaching the bottom of a hill, and I realize the bus has bad brakes.  I am comforted by the knowledge I will probably survive a wreck.  The little silver sedan.... probably not.

We turn onto Story Ave., through historic Butchertown.  Even the visually impaired can tell they're in Butchertown when they pass the Swift meat processing plant on a muggy summer day (which is unfortunately the kind of summer day we usually get here in the Ohio River Valley).  When I was a kid, I can remember the noon news on TV quoting today's sale prices at the stockyards, for cattle, pork, even tobacco.

As I said, my fellow riders are mostly quiet -- no Amish Steve Irwin wrestling with a jammed side door that won't open.  Quiet, except for one woman with curly blond hair who doesn't seem to know what to do with herself if she's not talking.  I count three different phone conversations she makes, nothing really substantial that couldn't wait to say in person, unless no one can stand to be around her?  Hard to say from just one bus ride.

A bike courier with nice athletic legs is on the other side of the street, coming from the other direction.  I think it's the same one I saw coming out of my building one afternoon.  Yes, it's him;  I'd remember those thigh muscles anywhere!  We turn from Market Street left onto Preston, past a row of shoe stores with a gay bar, Tryangles, in the middle.  Handy for the drag queens to shop, but do they carry size 12 wide?

We go a block on Preston and turn onto Jefferson St. near the hospitals.  All the cute gals and guys in their blue scrubs are making their way to work.  What is it that's so sexy about scrubs?  Is it the loose casual fit blended with their purely professional look -- the fashion equivalent of a mullet?  (Business in the front, party in the back?)  I just know it makes me want a sponge bath.

Minutes later, I debark (isn't that a funny word -- like you were going to bark and then take it back at the last minute?) at 4th and Jefferson Streets, the heart of downtown.  On one side, the shaft of the penis building rises majestically to greet the morning.  But I turn the other way, south towards where I work.  Walking down Fourth Street, past the hustle and bustle of the city, makes me feel like Mary Tyler Moore -- I only wish men could wear hats so I'd have one to throw, 'cause I'm gonna make it after all.

Ten minutes later, I'm at my desk, booting up my computer, eagerly awaiting to see what adventures my inbox will bring me today.

I board my bus this rainy afternoon right outside the building I work.  I'm lucky to only have to walk 2 blocks at most at either end of my trip.  The air inside is damp; the air conditioning isn't on--perhaps a cost-saving measure in the recession?  Usually it's freezing, especially on this bus, the #31 to Middletown, one of the well-heeled East End suburbs.  So, I sit and start reading my book, Halfway Home by Paul Monette.  I'm sometimes tempted to read something a little more shocking, more provocative, like The Joys of Gay Sex or Ann Coulter's latest book.  But not today.

Around the corner, there's a big stop on Broadway where there's usually a few buses loading or unloading.  Here, the drivers change, and one relates to the other that the front door is sticking, among other problems.  They carry on like caricatures, with "gurl" this and "gurl" that, reminding me of Gary and me last weekend.  Soon we're back on our way, with a fresh driver but still no air conditioning.

A few stops later, in the heart of the CBD, a couple gets on.  The woman is obviously drawn by The Far Side's Gary Larson, her rounded face full of character.  The man is gently chided by the driver; he didn't show her his bus pass.  He's been riding for 20 years, he says as he pulls it out of his wallet.  The couple take a seat and start chattering.

Near the convention center, a few more riders get on.  One of them, with a scraggly beard and matching desert camouflage hat and vest, looks like an Amish Crocodile Dundee:  "When you're on your rumspringa, there's lots of dangerous predators to watch out for...."

...to be continued....