No taxation without consternation?

The amicable woman behind the desk swiped my credit card and with my $75 copay I received another view of the great fallacy of American capitalist propaganda.

In Belgium’s universal healthcare system I paid 65 euros for a similar service, then two weeks later had 63 euros deposited back into my account by my health insurance, under which a full year cost less than half of what I pay per month now. But I don’t want to talk about how America pays more money for less care than anyone else. That’s been done.

Maximalius persuades Aurelianus to pay his taxes

No, instead of talking about the Republican’s last disgrace, let’s talk about their next one: taxes.

After all, that is Right’s attack line. “Sure healthcare’s affordable there, but you paid so much more in taxes.” I thought about that as I took one of the open chairs, upholstered as usual in an unfortunate camel color. Yes, I did pay higher taxes in Belgium, but I’m going to resist the desire to list the benefits I gained from them. Again, already well done elsewhere.

Because there’s something else going on, and sadly, it makes perfect sense. Vendors charge as much as consumers are willing to pay, which depends on what’s in their bank accounts. In the US we get a higher percentage of our paychecks into our accounts, and the prices go up. Then the bill comes due for all the services we want but haven’t paid for.

Public transit? Must be nice. Who pays for that?

Most ironic analogy? It’s like we’re paying taxes before making our deductions. That is, we pay our cost of living from our gross income, instead of our net. Then we pay for a (semi)functional system after the fact and wind up broke.

I just spent a few tortured minutes comparing the cost of living in my hometown to various beautiful European and Canadian cities, then did the same for New York since people like to talk about that place. I got data like this:

Consumer prices in Vancouver are 19.82% lower than in Oakland and 29.91% lower than NY

Rent prices in Paris are 46.60% lower than in Oakland and 57.33% lower than NY

Restaurant prices in Madrid are 29.99% lower than in Oakland and 38.92% lower than NY

Groceries prices in London are 34.07% lower than in Oakland and 39.77% lower than NY

Local Purchasing Power in Berlin is 21.40% higher than in Oakland and 11.55% higher than NY

Hey Marco, what tax bracket are you in?

Try it for yourself. The Bay Area is particularly expensive and Cost of Living is a complicated thing, but it seems clear to me that we in the US have been bamboozled into believing that not paying taxes saves us money, when it doesn’t. Especially not if we then want healthcare, education, roads, etc (not to mention the entertainment of bombing everywhere and giving festively massive tax cuts to extremely profitable oil companies). And paying taxes? We call it “government stealing my money!” Europeans call it “investing in our society.”

It’s all a bit dire, and I was feeling that squirmy feeling inside, the worm of fear for (and of) my country. Good timing for the next nice lady in scrubs to come tell me my test came back negative. Which is a positive. Everything’s all mixed up these days, but I’ll give thanks for what we have and work for what we don’t. And the sun is still shining. Happy tax season, everyone!

A gift from a fellow traveler

It was another vacation weekend. Sitting on the beach with two of my favorite people, my telephone far away, unchecked, the madness of the modern moment unimportant before the relentless majesty of an ocean.

Then back to this side of reality, the profanities of each day’s presidential manipulations and depredations. Trump standing in front of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, “This plane, as you know, was built right here in the great state of South Carolina. Our goal as a nation must be to rely on less imports and more products made here in the USA.”

Because it doesn’t matter to him that the fuselage comes from Italy. The wings from Japan. Passenger doors from France. That Boeing would suffer bigly under his backward agenda of tariffs and isolationism. He doesn’t understand or care that modern reality is not one of warring city-states but of progress through cooperation. The sad shriveled soul of an insecure narcissist cannot fathom cooperation or trust. They are not in his nature, and I pity the human in him.

But in the meantime he’s trashing the rest of us. And my mind wants to go back and hide on that beach...watching the waves...eating that sandwich...hearing the laughter and words of loved ones…

But what’s going on matters. And it’s bleak, in reality and in the headlines. So it was all the more precious to get an email from a former tour member:

Paris is picnics on the Seine.
Whether you're wearing a hijab or not.

“I thought of you today when I read about Trump’s bashing of Paris. I want you to know that the Paris you showed (my husband), me, and the rest of our wonderful group was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life...the amazing sites, the rich history, the art, the kindness of the people and well, of course, the food and wine. While Trump’s distortion of reality makes me feel quite hopeless at times, I know first-hand that his ‘alternate reality’ is dead wrong--thanks to you.”

And suddenly the sun feels warmer, my heart feels lighter, and I feel connected with the real human spirit, which is welcoming, encompassing, and kind. Which seeks to understand and support, not belittle and blame. Which is exactly the understanding we seek to foster on Rick Steves tours. It's immensely gratifying to know I succeeded at least once.

85% of those Dreamliners are sold overseas, and each one can carry about 300 people like my tour members towards greater understanding of each other, community with each other, peace with ourselves.

It’s still important to take short breaks from the dire headlines. But even more important to remember that they are not the full story.

Greece, and a benediction on the eve of judgment day

I confess, my 1st impression of Athens was of spray paint.
Ugly tags on buildings once splendid, scattered splatters on
shells that used to be homes, and chemical layers on
anything that used to have a purpose. Kinda dark, I know.

Democracy, theater, and literature. Mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Olive oil, feta, and loincloths. Greece is the birthplace of so many of western civilization’s highest achievements. But I had bandwidth for none of it.

All I could think of was the unthinkable, the pending, ongoing, seemingly unstoppable personal disaster that I somehow needed to fix. The right combination of words, the proper demonstration of the emotion in me, the right something to fix what was wrong. My lady’s flight would land in a few hours, and I had no idea what to do.

Okay so some of it was fun

My pen was useless, journal didn’t want to listen, and voices inside couldn’t agree on what to talk about. It was like Spain in there, everyone talking, no one listening. So I let my feet take over, step by step, looking for something to find.

Found a church. Went inside. Met a man who looked at me from the other side of our linguistic divide. Built a bridge of gestures, smiles, and a half-heft of my camera out of my bag, and he waved his hand in permission.

“Please. Yes. Photo ok.” He grew stern. “Please, five minute only. Then is… Greek economy.” He shrugged and I pretended to understand, until he moved a tapestry to reach the circuit breakers and flipped the lights on.

The Church of St Demetrius Psirri
Athens, Greece

Ah. No money for the electric bill. But economic concerns are no match for Greek hospitality and generosity, possibly part of what got them in the current mess, and certainly fundamental in what will get them out of it.

But I wasn’t thinking about the politics of unity or separation, the psychology of blame and castigation, or the economics of exploitation by the wealthy of the poor and by the poor of themselves. I was in a church. And what a church it was, this neighborhood chapel too unremarkable to show up on any maps.

Glittering chandeliers hung from fresco'd ceilings where angels watched over a gold-leaf landscape of heaven. Censers dripped their residual aromatic prayers, and the paint of ages flaked off the arches of history, all illuminated in the defiantly boisterous light of the electric lightbulb.

Don't you do it. Don't you
start humming Smooth Criminal

I was raised in Protestant simplicity, white walls and minimalist iconography, but here was a density of shining saints slaying dragons and offering their benedictions from behind ornate layers of polished silver. Saints with knowing eyes. A black madonna with a silver hand, and I tried desperately not to think about Michael Jackson’s glove.

It was impressive. But I still had no use for established gods, all of which still looked political. What I found holy was the smile of that man. His desire to show me something he found beautiful, and to give me a positive experience, no reward asked, no sinful motivation, just human kindness.

Now that’s an altar where I would light a candle. Even if it doesn’t solve my problems.

Panama papered with money

Panama is a transitory sort of place, a door of sand and rebar where Pacific pressures seek Atlantic relief, South American impetus touches North American markets, and the West Indies just want to finally find the Orient. And my first time there, it was a clanging casino where women with little clothing looked for men who wanted to see them with even less.

The woman I was with had substantially more clothing on, and was just looking to withdraw some cash. (I assure you, we were entirely platonic.) We hoped to be co-passengers on a boat to Colombia, and finding a place for a cash advance in Panama City was harder than you’d think. Our local friend’s advice was to try the casino.

Where do people want money more urgently than in a casino? And where else is there the kind of security that ensures they’ll have money on hand, and that you’ll get to keep it when they give it to you?

While she concentrated on paper forms, I peered at the lifeforms.

In the main room sprawled a crowd of retired, wealthy, and vaguely confused men who looked like they were having fun. But for the withdrawal, we had to go into a higher roller’s room, where the few specimens were quiet, young, and determined to look like movie tough guys. (The lights aren’t that bright, bro, you probably don’t need to wear those thousand-dollar sunglasses. And not much need for a poker face when you’re playing blackjack.) They didn’t look like they were having fun. Too Jason Statham-faced.

“This town is so full of crooks” sighed our local friend. “None of these boys pays taxes. Well, none of these boys work, but their papi’s don’t pay taxes.”

I thought of all the Cayman Island flags I’d seen brazenly displayed on luxury yachts over the years, taunting the taxpayers, and was unsurprised.

“Panama City has long been where corrupt politicians come after they get kicked out of their countries, and they bring their treasuries with them. We’ve got lots of first-class pendejos here.” She added. “But now we get all sorts of shady businessmen too. Okay, ready to go?”

I was, and we did (and the days on the boat were magnificent). But that image, glittering rich people who refuse to pay back to the societies that made them wealthy, came to mind this week when I read about the Panama Papers.

Are they surprising? Not remotely. Are they important, as an opportunity to change this system? Absolutely. I for one am hoping to see something come about from this, beyond forcing the Icelandic Prime Minister to resign.

The "Spanish Robin Hood" is just the beginning; Feelgood Friday

Ready to feel good?

From this report

Unemployment in Spain right now is 37%, and over 55% among the 16-24. Banks are foreclosing on people right and left, and when this happens in Spain, you still have to pay the bloody mortgage. Suicides by overwhelmed ex-homeowners are becoming common, and in some cases while the bailiffs are coming up the stairs, the homeowners jump off the balcony. The international banking mafia has pushed the Spanish government to pass laws making it even easier to fire employees and pay them less severance when you do it, so unemployment is only increasing, while the masses see the political and economic elites as hopelessly and unapologetically corrupt, in the country with the worst income inequality in Europe (though still not as bad as the US, apparently).

Feeling good yet? Wait for it.

All these problems are at their worst in the south (a global trend that may seem familiar), which in Spain’s case means Andalucia. I remember beautiful Andaluz mountain towns where not much was going on, and I fear for the people now. But not all of them. Not the ones in Marinaleda.

In the late 1970s, when Spain was roiling after the death of Franco, trying to catch up to a world from which they’d been isolated for 35 years, Marinaleda elected a mayor named Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo. A very different 35 years later and he’s still in office, elected with overwhelming majorities in every election. Why? What has he been doing?

I saw this on a wall in Bogota, Colombia in 2012, before I'd
ever heard of Marinaleda.

They started with a “hunger strike to end hunger” and multiple occupations of large estates under the slogan “Land for those who work it”, alternating with legal appeals within the system. After twelve years of this, they gained control over a stretch of farmland, and now roughly 2,650 of the 2,748 people in the town are part of a farm co-op on it. They work up to six and a half hours a day and are paid twice Spain’s minimum wage, while all profits from the farm are reinvested to create more jobs. Use the profit/product of the land to help people, instead of enriching the 1%? What an astonishing idea.

From this excellent article in The Guardian: “‘We believe the land should belong to the community that works it, and not in the dead hands of the nobility.’ That's why the big landowners planted wheat, (Sanchez Gordillo) explained – wheat could be harvested with a machine, overseen by a few labourers; in Marinaleda, crops like artichokes and tomatoes were chosen precisely because they needed lots of labour.”

From a NY Times article on Marinaleda

The crops they chose required “the creation of a processing factory that provided a secondary industry back in the village, and thus more employment. ‘Our aim was not to create profit, but jobs,’ Sánchez Gordillo explained to me. This philosophy runs directly counter to the late-capitalist emphasis on ‘efficiency’ – a word that has been elevated to almost holy status in the neoliberal lexicon, but in reality has become a shameful euphemism for the sacrifice of human dignity at the altar of share prices."

I don’t know about you, but I get a big ol’ ethical boner when I read those paragraphs. Feeling good yet? Want more?

Remember those evictions? Marinaleda bought and expropriated thousands of square meters of land, and now returns it to the people, along with building materials, labor, and architectural plans through public grants. Homeowners pay 15 euro/month for the rest of their lives, and cannot sell their homes (to prevent speculation).

People in Marinaleda like their mayor

More feelgoodery? Last August, Sanchez Gordillo led supporters into a grocery store, loaded up basic foodstuffs, and took them, without paying, across town to donate to a food bank. “There are families who can’t afford to eat. In the 21st century this is an absolute disgrace. Food is a right, not something with which you speculate.” Of course, if everyone did this, we might have a problem with the people we depend on to transport our food, but the statement, and its willingness to act on behalf of what’s right, are powerful things, a powerful call for higher standards than profit for the few.

The town has no police (and no crime), everyone shares in cleaning and maintaining the community, and they spend the money they save on free internet for all and heavily subsidized childcare. While the neoliberal world decays in entrenched systems of exploitation and corruption, disenfranchised and segregated, apathetic or angry, in Marinaleda co-op members are part of the town’s workings, have a voice, and participate in their community. Private enterprise is absolutely allowed, but exploitative mega-chains are not welcome. Sorry, Walmart, but vete al carajo.

I remember back to the Occupy movement, the indignados in Europe, and all the world’s people who recognize that a system that sucks the blood from the masses to fatten the 1% is not the best we can do, and I can hear the opposition and critics who said “Okay, unfettered rapacious capitalist greed doesn’t work for you, but what do you suggest?” Occupy didn’t seem able to produce a clear alternative, but 108 kilometers from Sevilla, I know where you can find one.

It's all good

He also cut $1.6 billion from schools. NJ is now
one of only three states where more people are
falling into poverty than rising out of it.

I got a little down about this election. It struck me as depressing that people voted for the party of economic exploitation, the billionaire 1% who feed on the blood of the workers and piss in the pool of nature’s sanctuary. The party of intolerance, aggression and divisiveness.

Sure, I see how people could like the stated values of those oiliest of politicians, but it seems clear to me that their rhetoric is as heartfelt as a vampire’s claim of vegetarianism. “We believe in freedom!”, except for anyone we don’t like; and “we believe in liberty!”, except for gays; we believe in low taxes...on those with all the money, and we believe in small government, except for the parts of it that pay our friends, or that we use to watch everything you do…

That sort of thing. They feel like the party of luxury yachts with Cayman Island flags and armed guards to keep the drowning refugees of wars they started from spoiling their caviar cocktail hour.

But then again, who do I vote for? I vote for a party whose spoken rhetoric is tepid at best, whose platform boils down to The Lesser of Two Evils, and I believe their promises only slightly more than I do those of the yachtsmen. Slightly.

All this bullhockey politicking and deception, distraction and destruction, it makes you want to quit, walk away and get your kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames, as the iconic and ultimately useless Jim Morrison intuited. So I’m going to go with that.

But don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not giving up. In fact, this is actually the way forward.

I will still care about these things, I will still vote, I will still voice my human ethical opinions, but politics? They are not the answer. They never have been.

Because humanity’s problems are not political.

Humanity’s problems are philosophical (and/or spiritual, if you’re into that sort of thing). They are made of evolution and love, not dollars and contracts. They are compassion and personal growth, not ballots and slogans.

Politics holds such seductive promise. For the ethical, it seems a way to pull positive change into the world, and for the im/amoral, it is a mechanism to preserve the status quo of privilege and legitimize their greed. Sure, it is capable of both these things, but only on a very secondary level. It’s in the minds, hearts, souls (or lack thereof) that these things really happen.

We call them our “leaders”, but how often do they actually lead? Very rarely. More often, they are dragged like obstinate children behind the forward progress of our species. Deep down, humans are good, humans love, humans want each other to be happy. It takes suffering, manipulation, and corruption to pull us away from our better nature, and politics is a player on the (small) squad that keeps us from it.

So, if our “leaders” are dragged behind our evolution, it seems to me that the best response is to keep on evolving. So I’m not really going to stress about the Senate, even as it moves into yet another period of insidious destruction through obstruction, and the pernicious betrayal of humanity’s promise (pretty much the way it was already doing). Instead, I’m going to devote my attention, my focus, my soul, to the positive progress of our species, one me at a time.

There are amazing people doing amazing things. And amazing people doing mundane things. And mundane people doing amazing things. But the mundane people doing mundane things? I’m not going to watch them on CSPAN any more. (Okay, I never did, but you get the point.)

It’s the tragic irony of modern humanity, that most of those who want to rule, are precisely those who should be given no authority whatsoever. If we didn’t give our leaders this power, if we sat in our beer halls and laughed at little Hitler’s rantings instead of letting each other think he mattered, things would be a whole lot better.

So/but yes, all in all, humans are sheep. We know this. We follow the flock and do as we tell ourselves to do. But I’d rather hang out with sheep than be mauled by sharks.

(I apologize sharks, that was an unfair demonization of you beautiful creatures, but, y’know, I needed you as a symbol. I would love to swim with you sometime, though please, keep the mauling to a minimum. And yes, wolves would have fit the metaphor more aptly, but I just couldn’t bring myself to slander those incredible animals.)

Getting gas in Venezuela

It’s a routine errand, expensive, kinda smelly, and utterly unexciting, for millions (billions?) of people. Filling up the tank. Getting gas. Burning dinosaur bones. (And you were worried this was a chronological consequence of the post on Venezuelan food. Tut tut, I'm classy.)

You pull into the station, maybe wait in line, park your car, turn it off, no smoking, no cell phones, stand there bored while the thick black hose squirts thick black sludge into your car, the sun is hot on your neck. Then swipe your card to pay your $30, $40, $50...$60 per tank?

It’s pretty much the same in Venezuela, with one major difference. No, it’s not that there was no brand name necessary on the shelter. No, it’s not the absence of muzak “radio” piped in.

Can you guess the difference?

If my math is correct, with it’s flurry of units of measurement, and depending on what rate you actually get for your dollar (no one uses the official rate, so I’m using the average rate one gets in a hotel, about 45 bolivars per dollar), a gallon of gas that day, and every day, in Venezuela costs about $0.008 per gallon.

A gallon of gas costs less than a penny.

How do you feel about that?

But that’s Venezuelan gas, we Americans get the finer stuff, the Saudi Arabian stuff, the moral stuff, right?

Guess who is, and always has been, the number one purchaser of Venezuelan oil. I don’t even need to tell you.

(And we can get into the relative morality of Venezuela versus the Middle East another day.)

How do you feel, right now, about the subsidies oil companies receive? How do you feel about the fact that the profits they make are the highest in human history?

Let's sing a little song to make you feel better.

I had to come home to remember how to feel out of place.

The Portuguese Cistern in El Jadida, Morocco

I'm at home in the souk of Al Jadida, talking to bouncers in Riga, and arriving in Yangon without a clue. I was comfortable on the streets of a city 99% said is too dangerous to visit, and felt harmony in the sandpaper air of a frozen Neptune landscape. But in my home town, among the crowd I hope to join (travel writers), I sweat and stammer, useless and misaligned. I am more wallflower, wallpaper, than I ever was in adolescence, and I cling to ego masturbation, remembering South African townships, gazing over the Syrian Plain, and Guatemalan border towns where drugs outweighed human meat and that's all you are.

Pretty faces I cannot talk to drift around. What would I say? Did I ever tell you about wandering Hong Kong until I was sure I'd escaped the English language, then going for food, my consternation at the waiter's rudimentary vocabulary soothed since it allowed him to tell me I could have pig heart instead of chicken?

Why does this place, this event, disassemble me so efficiently? Is it just that the room is too small and too hot, no seats and no oxygen, leaving me standing/sweating by the door? Or that a single half-glass of wine costs ten frickin dollars? More likely, it's because these gods of an intimidating industry, conquerors of a world that hasn't even stamped my passport yet, are just so damn....NICE! I want them to be pricks, so much easier to scorn, but they seem so damn welcoming. President, Prime Minister, and King, and I'd gleefully go to lunch with any of them. I should be able to talk to them. I would tell them they should move to a larger space. With windows.

Last time, leaving this interpersonal constipation made me dance, but tonight I'm astounded that the glass walls aren't shattering behind me as I walk through Versailles, where bvlgari, Jimmy Choo, and other names I know from stories not written for my demographic, sell shit made in the same damn sweatshops for $(I have no idea) instead of the relatively honest $10 at Ross. Models three times a human's height and half the width speak with anorexic irony as they say “let them eat cake” down to the mentally disturbed man with a semi-circle spine pushing a shopping cart full of garbage.

But they don't eat cake, it's a chicken bone I step over in the BART hallway where the homeless sleep on their faces while we walk past in clean laundry.

I transfer trains in West Oakland, where freeway overpasses allow the affluent to pass right over the graffiti'd streets paved with broken glass and angry fear, where the only constellations are on their way to San Francisco International Airport.

I make the mistake of trying to talk to strangers as I get on my next train. I can't help it. “Welcome to West Oakland” slips out of my mouth as I wait for disembarking passengers to alight; I'm such a nice young man. I'm met only by stony unresponsiveness, most people pretending I never spoke, while those too close for that act look prepared to fight.

I'm 20% inclined to cooperate with that, right now. I've become curious what it would feel like with flesh instead of the heavy bag.

“Oh, right, Americans don't talk to each other” I mumble as I board. Great, now I AM the crazy guy. I manage not to add “I forgot, I have to leave the damn country if I want to meet anyone.”

What's the best medicine for a grumpus? That's right: a burrito. I had carnitas yesterday (just kidding, it was today at lunch, I'm being coy) so I opt for pollo asado, black beans (as if there's any other valid option) and take it home to the house I am happy to live in, with the roommate I like, the dogs I adore, and a computer to hammer out a cathartic blog. I try not to swear, since my mother and her priest read this. Hi Mom. Hi Father Jeff.

Consoled by rice and beans, soothed by sour cream and avocado, I can take stock. Tonight wasn't so bad. I went for a walk, nodded to some people I know, and the forecast looks promising for a lunch I'd enjoy, with one of the monarchs of the enticing realm of writers.

I still might feel more at home on the alleys, calles, mitaani, sadaka, (and other words for “street” that I'd have to google first) of foreign countries, but I'm pretty happy on my little Avenue tonight, overly grandiose as that title is.

PS. I know, Neptune's surface is gas, but Mars is almost a cliché now, and Iceland ain't red.

PPS. The pig heart was good. The oysters were the gross part of that bowl of slimy congee.

PPPS. “Bvlgari”? Whoever decided to spell it that way gets a prominent place in line for the guillotine.

PPPPS. No offense to those of you who prefer pinto beans. Luckily, there's room enough in the world for all of us, even those of you with poor taste in beans.

I've got more pretty pictures of Iceland for next time.

The system's out of order, this lad's opinion, and the fire hasn't even started yet.

“Well, I guess that's what we get for unplugging for a few hours,” said the businessman, relaxed on his bench outside the shuttered BART train station. “They must have decided to go on strike late last night. My office hasn't decided what they want me to do about it yet.” He leaned back, no frown on his face as it angled towards the morning sun, his loafers tapping slightly to a beat only he could hear.

Here was a man at peace with the problem. The bag lady down the row to his left looked at him without expression.

In a parallel universe I took them both out for breakfast, heard their stories and watched them fall in unlikely love (Joaquin Phoenix and Susan Sarandon for the movie adaptation?), but I was itching to get to Santa Cruz. The fire and light festival started in eleven hours, and I had plans for lunch, then aspired to a full afternoon helping without getting in the way.

Run back to house to check for alternate route. Bus leaves in three minutes, back at station. Run back, intercept bus partway, disembark downtown Oakland where local TV crews were interviewing commuters standing in line for the replacement buses across the bridge. I chatted in a Scottish accent with the guy next to me in hopes of hooking an interview, but the woman in front of us had boobs.

Boobs trump Scotland, apparently.

Too bad, because I was all ready to give a foreigner's (sic) view of contemporary American democracy. “What do you think of the strike?” They would ask.

“Well, it's an essential part of your country, isn't it? Your Constitution was designed to protect ye from the government, but they're not really the main threat anymore, are they? Not since Reagan privatized the lot of it. No, it's the businesses, yer employers that've got the axe over yer heads now. The idea was that if ye were abused, ye could vote them out, but you canna vote for a new boss, can ye? So you've got the strike, it's the modern equivalent of the ballot, isn't it?”

They were right to go with the boobs.

Packed bus creeping across crammed bridge, tankers below, then puking us into an unfamiliar hub, clicking of flats, where frantic employees in florescent vests answered rapid-fire questions and held heavy flashlights in defensive positions, clip board shields. Next transport medium: I didn't even know San Francisco had an underground train.

The uniformed woman with hair extensions and long acrylic nails called me “hun” as she directed this poor lost tourist to the train, her coworker joining us in a threesome of “have a nice day” grins and well-wishing.

The guy in front of me was asleep in his Hawaiian shirt, but woke when we passed the baseball park and shuffled to the train station with me. “Sir, I'm afraid you can't take pictures of the equipment, for security reasons” said the employee who I recognized as the nice one from my last trip's Good Cop/Bad Cop experience. I'd already given one (mental) speech, so opted against lecturing him about the chronic and egocentric paranoia of the United States, instead going with more smiles and well-wishing.

I reached San Jose an hour and a half behind schedule, but well on my way to catching up on my This American Life and Radiolab podcasts. (David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell are geniuses. Genae.) I was already entertained, educated, and frustrated, and the best part of the day was yet to come...