17/10/2011

Ridin' the Dog

This is the first post from my new Droid and my first post from a Greyhound bus. I just spent the week in Portland, first with my friend Kimberlee and her two-year old son Reid then with Thea Bella and Baby Leo who is no longer a baby but an exhuberant toddler. Reid was a doll and first class traveler. I say that after sharing a room with him and exploring Portand with him and his mom via mass transit. Thea Bella is heartbreakingly sweet, smart and beautiful and, at 14 months, Baby Leo is a story teller, soccer champion and wild man. More on them later.

I am loving my new phone but I can't quite say the same thing for the Dog.ù Well, it's not too bad, better than tolerable, an ok way to pass an afternoon, but not exactly "fun“. The quality changes with the passengers but the seat is really comfotrable. However, at the moment there's a good old girl chatter box in the front seat who hasn't drawn a breath since she boarded in Eugene. The driver doesn't mind. He's a rolling talk show host expert in the fine art of passing the miles. We learned during the Portland to Eugene leg of the journey that he's been driving for 37 years. He talked about some of the crazy things that have happened on his bus over the years, stabbings, shotings, births, heart attacks, naked people jumping of the windows. Anything and everything you can imagine has happened on his bus although he made a point of explaining these shenanigans are confined to the lower 1% but spread out over 37 years even 1% adds up hto a whole lot of crazy. A French speaking magician type, black top hat, vest and pants, white gloves barded in Eugene. So far, no rabbits.

9 comments:

Kristiana said...

Hope you made it safe and sound. Thea was awake in her bed when I got home so we shared a long hug. Not all is lost. Come again soon!!

Roy said...

I took the Dog from Kansas City to San Francisco one time in 1967. Yow. But now that you mention it, it was another one taking me from Portland, OR to SF where the drunk guy puked on the ribbed floor mat that runs all the way from the front of the bus to the back between the aisles, and when the Dog slowed down, and when it sped up . . . well, not a pretty picture.

BUT glad you had a good time! Seize the 'Droid.

asha said...

Kristiana, lucky you. I am in serious Thea Bella withdrawal here. Can't wait to see you guys again!

Roy, that OR/SF ride was classic, definitely part of sage of the open road.

Yes! Seize the 'Droid.

Kimberlee said...

hmmm let's see would I rather be ridin' the Dog or packing to move....well that depends is the 2 year old with me on the Dog climbing all over the seats and the other passengers because if so packing has it's perks:)

I have to say ridin' the tracks to and fro Portland felt very sophisticated definitely a nice way to take a liitle one on a road trip.

asha said...

Kimberlee, take it from me. You and Reid would definitely prefer ridin' the Rails to ridin' the Dog but, in any case, Reid is a world class traveler and all around cool little guy. It was great to meet him and fun spending a few days with the two of you in Portland. I look forward to another adventure with you guys before too long. Good luck on the move.

Roy said...

Word verification: hyper. That is so weird that they would use an actual real word and not some senseless conglomeration of letters so as to more effectively foil the evil hackers, who, in their ceaseless quest to undermine and annoy all that is important to the small Internet people to whom they are so indebted in the first place for insisting, by their very numbers, on an ongoing, at least marginally well-mainted infrastructure of fiber optic networks, seek to somehow aggrandize their fragile pre-pubescent egos while simultaneously sprinkling said Internet with useless and inappropriate advertising via links that no one in their right mind would follow and if you did by accident would surely, if any kind of human at all, make a mental note to eschew any and all products provided by

Roy said...

Sorry. Warming up for NaNoWriMo.

Don said...

Rode the Dog a lot from Oakland to Walnut Creek back in my lovestruck high school days before they ran BART on weekends.

Leo? Does Thea have a ...

asha said...

Roy, delighted to hear NaNoWriMo is on your horizon. That is so exciting. The very thought makes me want to install a countdown clock on my desktop to mark IT's coming. Man oh man, NaNoWriMo. What a delicious but contained madness is this thing called NaNoWriMo. What a loopy, insular, delightful free-fall and magnificent celebration it is. Afternoons at a favorite coffee shop tap tap tapping away, while the dreadful, always irritated Inner Editor remains banned to the street, peering in through the frosty front window yet incapable of casting his word killing spell as the mind, wired directly into the point of the pen, freely spawns thousands of words a day, squiggling raucous creatures roiling in their new found freedom. Hmmmmm......maybe I...?????!!!

Don, Oakland to Walnut Creek? Cool. BART's not nearly as fun as The Dog. No soul. As for Thea and Baby Leo, no. Leo is Thea's little cousin.