People Watching with a Destination

Why travel if not to see other people in other places? Ask seasoned travelers their favorite spots to people watch and you’ll likely hear a Parisian café, a Central Park lawn, the Hollywood strip. My friends would likely cite the Talladega racetrack infield or Burning Man, but it’s all the same – a stationary spot amidst a mass of eclectic movement.

I’ve recently discovered a more efficient, productive form of people watching: Public transportation. And I don’t mean airlines; no one counts those as public transportation. Air travel is more like being chained to a wildly bucking bronco quarter-machine outside a dysfunctional department store in a 1970s strip mall. Nothing good happens there and you leave sore, feeling slightly less human, and 25 cents dumber.

I’m talking buses, trains, ferries. I’ve been using the bus lines to get around Seattle this summer and it always leaves me in a far better mood than were I to drive the same distance. Yes, it feels nice to be part of the “green” patrol of gas-free do-gooders, but the best part is seeing and hearing the people, even the ubiquitous bus-riding nutjobs.

On a train ride to Portland I had an entire four-seat booth with table to myself. I set up my laptop and plugged it in to a floorboard power outlet. The guy behind me agonized over math problems in preparation for the GRE test. The older gentleman across the way noticed and offered a friendly tutorial; he’d taught high school math for decades. I spent a half hour chatting with the diner car chief and met two talkative twelve-year-olds on their way back from a Justin Timberlake (JT) concert. So I learned about that, which was nice.

And my parents recently visited me in Seattle, where I relocated months ago. Out here water separates the mainland from dozens of islands and the Olympic Peninsula. We took a ferry to Orcas Island. Ferries are the grand marquee of public transportation – cruise-like in scenery and bus-like in rapid usefulness. Kids run from one side to the other looking for dolphins or sea birds, lovers drape over the rail planning adventures, friends sit inside at a booth playing cards. I listen to dad analyze the intricacies of ferry schedules. Vinyl booths and cloth seats might not have the allure of a sidewalk café in Paris and I might not spy an Olsen twin. But I'll keep an eye peeled for osprey, and ears tuned for juicy gossip. At the end of it all, at least I’ve gotten somewhere.