Travel Journal Excerpts 1

June 17, 2009
en route from NYC to DC

I always try to pick my seat with great care. I try to choose someone who looks as though they have things to occupy themselves with, and who consequently won't talk to me that much. I also like to sit near doors so that I have a short wait to exit. With these two motivators in mind, I chose my seat. The vamoose was fairly full, there were no empty rows, but a few empty seats, and I asked a woman "can I sit here?" to which she replied, "sure." Before we had even left the train station, she was on the phone to either her mother or her husband saying, "Thanks to your sound advice, I am the only person on the bus who has someone sitting next to them. You told me to sit in the front and I did, and everyone in the back has two seats to themselves." When she said this, I was so sad that my cell phone's battery was dead and I couldn't call someone and say, "Guess what this passive aggressive woman who is prone to hyperbole and very keen on displacing blame said about me when I was sitting right next to her!"

June 18, 2009
Washington DC

I was on the metro on my way to meet up with Britt for lunch, (after a somewhat unsuccessful walk to Ballston from Ashley's house) sitting down behind a man in business attire and across the aisle from a man in business attire. Nothing about this ride was seeming at all unusual until the guy across the aisle retrieved a pile of recycled paper towels from his briefcase, and started pulling them up the leg of his pants, then the other. I was watching out of my periphery--so as to not raise his awareness--to try to figure out what on earth he was doing. After he pulled the paper towels all the way up his trousers, he took a bundle of paper towels and shoved it down the front of his pants. At this point, the man in front of him looked over at him squarely, and then paper towel man picked up his things and went to the other end of the car. I wouldn't say that I am not used to crazy things on public transportation, the max has shown me a lot, but mostly its things I don't want to see like bare butts or genitalia, not things that leave me completely flummoxed like paper towels down your pants.