Riding to and from every day is a mixed blessing. I am freed from slavery to a machine and I don't have to drive on an roadway system which is grossly undersized for the volume of traffic that it carries. I don't waste fossil fuels, but I have to view both kindnesses and strangeness more frequently than I care to.
Homeless folks here use the Max to get around. I bitch a little bit when they are in the cripple seats, but I really can't say too much because my crippleyness is going away as I lose weight and exercise, and truth be told, they have a shitty life and I certainly won't go out of my way to make it worse. They probably need the warmth and sleep.
But what fascinates me is how they are busting ass to get by, just on a much-diminished scale. It appears that one of the sub-specialties is the collection and return of bottles/cans for deposit. Good on them. Like it or not, I kind of look upon this activity as a hunter-gatherer sort of deal. But the homeless folks do tend to use the Max for the hauling of large, smelly trash bags of empties, so my fascination is tempered.
But one thing that homeless folks have is their cell phones. Cheap cell phones abound. I am OK with this, this is in no way a negative comment, I just find the idea of spending money on a what used to be considered a luxury kind of ... well ..weird. But then I had an epiphany, that the cell phone is a no longer a luxury, it is an accepted and necessary part of our society.
Which, on further thought, made me even sadder. I guess that the idea that in Africa more people have access to cell phones than running water carries true here.
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