Freezing in Frisco

           Mark Twain is rumored to have said, "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco."  And that’s exactly how I felt on Friday when I had to go there for ANOTHER Covid test prior to an upcoming surgery.

          Unwisely, I wore open-toed sandals, white jeans, a T-shirt and an overblouse. It’s been 100 degrees where I live, and I couldn’t believe this nearby city could be that much colder. I was wrong.

          Had we been able to stay inside, out of the chilly wind, it would have been fine. But we had decided to take the train and have an adventure. This also included riding on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which took us to the sketchiest area that Amtrak services.

          Lest you wonder what I mean by sketchy, this is a bench we saw:

          Take a closer look toward the back of the seat. Yes, those are sharp screws sticking straight up. I can only imagine the screams of pain from anyone who might sit down without looking.

          We finished up and went back to the train station. Two trains came in simultaneously, and as we were trying to figure out which one would take us home, the correct one left. We now had two more hours to sit on hard concrete benches and wait. Soon Bob decided to use the restroom. But this required going back inside and walking through the station.  I now had blisters from my sandals, and couldn’t walk with him. But I assured him I’d be fine alone on the platform.

          For fifteen minutes I kept saying, “Go! I’ll be fine!” to which he would reply, “I’m not leaving you here. It’s dangerous.”  Finally he placed something beside me and took off.  I looked down and discovered his pocket knife. That’s right, a POCKET KNIFE.  Just the thing to defend myself if, say, Crocodile Dundee shows up.

          Soon he was back, but now he noticed swarms of ants on the ground. “It’s like Dunkirk!” he said, and began stomping furiously. He looked like a flamenco dancer who has never studied flamenco dancing. 

         Then my feet were freezing, so Bob emptied out the backpack and told me to put my feet inside. “Here,” he said brightly, “you can just bunny hop over when the train comes.”

          “I am not bunny hopping,” I said. And now I’m mad at myself for not dressing warmly or wearing shoes and socks.

          And then he earns his sainthood again by taking off his shoes and socks, and giving me his socks to wear. What a guy. I warmed up immediately. Always travel with a buddy.

And with a good book to read.  I recommend these!

         

Hot Mess Express

          Folks, you cannot make this stuff up.  About a week ago I fly to another city to join with some girlfriends to celebrate two of their birthdays. Except one of them is sick and can’t come.  And this is the one who’s supposed to drive me back to the airport, an hour and a half away, at the end of the trip.

          The others quickly book me a private shuttle, but then that service cancels due to a computer crash.  First world problems, I know.  BUT… this means I must now book a train ride, getting as close to the airport as possible.

          And usually train rides are great fun.  However, in Joniopolis things can happen.  Boarding the train is no problem.  But when it pulls into my stop, I jump off with my luggage, and notice the place doesn’t look quite right.  So I ask a couple walking by if this is, indeed, the stop I need. 

          “No, no!” they shout.  “It’s the next stop!”  Then they GRAB MY LUGGAGE AND THROW IT BACK ONTO THE TRAIN!  Have you ever done this in your life?  Naturally I jump back onto the train to stay with my bag, and then the doors shut and the train begins moving.  (Not all Samaritans are good, I have decided.)

          There’s no conductor, no train personnel anywhere, to ask.  I’m stuck waiting for the next stop, which turns out to be in one of the worst neighborhoods in the state, with no train station whatsosever. The last stop was the right one, not this one. I have no idea what that couple was thinking.

I cross the street to the “good” side and call for Uber while standing in piles of garbage.  

Then my phone freezes.  I walk down the road past this lovely billboard and the warning sign below it. I just know I will be robbed at any minute, my luggage the giveaway that I am not a local resident.

I find a “convenience market” that looks like it was just ransacked, or perhaps went through an earthquake.

  The man in there, behind several barricades, cannot help me call Uber. On the other hand, next door is a used car lot behind a tall wrought iron fence, where I could probably pick up a car for about $200.00

 I stand outside and try Uber again.  This time I connect. In a few minutes a woman pulls up to the curb.  She is wearing a floppy hat and I do not ask if this is her day job; I do not wish to know.

She drops me at the airport and I go through security, but one of my shoes dings and I have to be x-rayed, my shoes examined.  Were the TSA folks just bored, and wanted something to do?  Incredibly, they are suspicious of my shoe, but not my water bottle, which sailed through inspection.

I head for my gate, but the whole place is a ghost town.  

How can an airport be this empty?  In every direction I look, I am the only passenger in the terminal. And then I get it: I’ll bet everybody else is stuck on a train somewhere.

But if you are stuck on a train, at least bring along something to read. I recommend one of my books.

Can You Pass on Your Crazy Luck?

          I’m looking at the headline I wrote for this blog and realize you can take it two ways.  1) You can ask, “Can you pass your crazy luck on to your children, genetically?”  or 2) could you be offered crazy luck in life, and then just pass on it, and go for better luck instead?

          But I’m not sure we get to choose.  I mean, who would choose bad luck, right?  It just follows some folks around (and those of us with bent brains use it to write humor novels and comedy blogs).

          But now… ta-da!  I found an article in My Business Future Magazine that says, “Researchers Prove That Luck is Inherited.”  They studied 300,000 people and have proclaimed that luck is demonstrably genetic.

This not only absolves me from responsibility, which I love, but it explains the unbelievable things that happen to my children, as well.

          JUST LAST WEEK our grown daughter decided to take the train to visit a friend.  But first you have to catch a bus.  No problem, right?  No problem if you are unrelated to Joni. On the other hand, if you are my offspring, here is what your bus will do:

          Buses high center and get stuck on curbs 87% more of the time if one of the passengers is related to me.  Okay, I made that up, but seriously, has this ever happened to you, even once?  Remember, I’m the one who got hit by a semi here, and had my luggage lost by Air France for three days here.  You could scroll through this blog and find, quite literally, hundreds of examples of bad luck.

          Thank goodness our daughter’s train connection wasn’t for several hours.  It took 45 minutes for a tow-truck to get the bus off the curb.

          So I apologize to my daughter, the innocent victim of DNA.  But at least she took pictures for the cause of science. And comedy.

          Mishaps are how I have honed a sense of humor that has formed the basis of my entire writing career.  Check out the resulting 25 books here.

Attention Deficit Delight

            So I’m sitting on the platform of a train station in France.  My husband and I are trying to get to Paris from Provence, a problem we should all have on a regular basis, right?  We have way too much luggage, so St. Bob piles our bags about 3 feet from the tracks and tells me to sit on the luggage and wait.  He’s going to go to the ticket window and try to figure out which train we need to take.

            Sitting still is an easy assignment for me; I brought along a novel.  I pull it out and begin to read.  The next thing I know, Bob is back and asks, “Which way did the train come in?”  I look at him, puzzled as to why he is asking such an odd question.  “What train?” I say. 

            He stares at me for a few seconds with “duh” in his eyes, then points behind me.  I turn to look.  WHOA-HO!  Where on earth did that come from?  There’s a huge, black train right behind me, as if David Copperfield himself has made it materialize there.  But I’m pretty sure he lives in Las Vegas, so I quickly rule out this possibility. 

            “Seriously?” Bob is shouting.  “Seriously?  You didn’t even know a train pulled in?” 

            Now, in my defense, I was not given the assignment to watch for a train.  My job was to sit on the luggage and wait, a task I have completed, thank you very much. 

Bob is a cross between apoplectic and flabbergasted, now (possibly flabberplectic?) unable to fathom how anyone in their right mind (a clue not to miss, by the way), could be three feet away from a train and not hear it roaring into the station.

A tiny part of me wants to say, “Hey, if you wanted to know which way the train came in, you should have stayed here and watched for it yourself,” but I sense that I am going down in this battle, and waving that small of a pocket knife will not have much impact on his giant bazooka, already finding me in its cross hairs.

The explanation, of course, is a quasi-medical one, that I have ADD and its attendant hyperfocus that keeps me from noticing bombs going off, people screaming, or trains pulling into stations if I am already engrossed in another activity.  Like reading.  I’ve never been diagnosed, but it wouldn’t take a genius to identify the symptoms.  There’s a documented case of a woman who was so absorbed in a paper she was writing that she didn’t notice her house was on fire and her kitchen was engulfed in flames.  Firemen found her working away, oblivious.  If you don’t believe me, read about it here: http://add.about.com/od/adhdthebasics/a/Hyperfocus.htm.  Was this woman me?  No, but it could have been, easily. 

“You have no idea the tortured life I lead,” I say, trying not to laugh and instead, to sound truly sorry.

“You don’t have a tortured life,” Bob says.  “It’s the rest of us who are tortured—it’s like you’re on vacation every minute!”  Yikes.  Busted.  He is right, of course (are all writers like this?)  And, technically, I am on vacation, but I choose not to point this out.

Two weeks ago a friend sent me into the house for a box and I never came back.  It was like an obstacle course filled with distractions (making cookies, for one) and after ten minutes he came in at which point I screamed, “The box!  Yes!  I’ll get the box right now!” aghast that I had forgotten it.

Bob forbids me to answer the phone (I do it anyway; call me and you’ll see) because he’s sure the conversation will go like this.  Caller: May I speak with Bob?  Me: Bob isn’t here.  Caller: Oh.  Well, then, can you take a message?  Me: I’m not allowed to take messages.  Caller: Why not?  Me: Why what? 

On the other hand, if you have something you want me to read for you, believe me when I say you will have my complete and total attention.

Here we are in France, before and after Bob has forgiven me.  Provence at the top, then touring Paris, then meeting up there with our good friends, Bob and Karen Rogers.

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