A Bike, Bag, Book, A Bunch Of Bikinis And A Bus

I
will never forget the bus ride to Manila, Philippines, back in 1980. I was
traveling the world and always tried to take public transportation as a social
experiment.

There is no better way to learn about a country or to have an adventure than to
ride mass transit in a place where you don’t speak the language.

The
air was conditioned, but it was conditioned by the open windows and the retched
musty smells coming from the humid jungle. Added to this, were those smells
coming from the tightly packed mass of humanity inside the bus and the over two
dozen more small brown bodies stacked on top of it. Don’t forget the half dozen
chickens and the one pig which ran around underneath our feet during the entire
eight hour trip, and the smells they produced, of course.

Every
time the bus slowed there were vendors shoving anything you can imagine through
the windows.  Getting a beer was easier
than getting one in a bar and they were colder. On that bus were many young,
beautiful country girls, this is a trend on buses worldwide it seems.

The
subways in Tokyo were the most packed mass transit vehicles I’ve ever ridden; they
were filled with short men in black suits and beautiful girls with slanted
almond eyes. There were people standing at every door at every station, they
were like shoe horns for people; it was their jobs to pack in, addition people
after the trains were full as people.

The
trip to Victoria Peak on the island of Hong Kong was so steep you could barely
stand on the train, but was the most beautiful ride I ever took. There is
something truly lovely about breath taking scenery when it is filtered through polluted
air. The pollution mingles and mixes with the sunsets and sunrises and even
with the falling dew of the morning and evening, to create uniquely amazing,
unforgettable scenes.

There
was the open air train somewhere in amongst the beer and some Middle Eastern
country I can’t quite remember the name of. It rocked along with a mountain
rising up on the left side of it and a beautiful desert on the right. The
tracks were in such poor shape that it occasionally jolted so hard it
threatened to jump the tracks, and when it did, dust cascaded through the air,
turning the world tan for a few moments. The beer was not only for recreational
purposes, but a requirement to quell the underlying fear involved in the ride.

So
I realized it was costing me over seven hundred bucks to drive across Miami, to
work each month. Don’t you love parking and tolls? Paying for parking is like
paying the dentist to hurt you. Tolls are taxes the government doesn’t call taxes.
It’s like the lottery; you can’t steal it if it isn’t there. This seems to be
the mantra for governments everywhere.

I
decided to relive the adventures of my youth and take the Miami-Dade transit
system to save a little money. First I needed to pack a bag and grab a book,
then I mounted my trusty bike and ride about ten blocks to the nearest bus
stop, the furthest south western stop in the system. The trip takes about a
hundred and twenty minutes, and it requires me to haul the three b’s up three
escalators, down three flights of steps, from one bus to a train and then from
that train to another bus, getting off at the furthest north eastern stop of
the system. I get to read a lot, and it saves me over six hundred bucks a month,
I’m not complaining. It actually only takes about fifteen minutes more than it
did when I was driving, and there are no traffic jams to contend with.

Bike
racks have replaced the pigs and chickens, and the air is conditioned. The
scenery is as beautiful as any in the world, face it Miami is beautiful. There
are still the smells of tightly packed people just getting off of work and the
sweet icky stuff they use to hide such smells, but it ain’t bad. There are
still the vendors selling anything you can imagine you want and many things you
don’t want at Government Center in the heart of Miami, but I’ve outgrown
wanting or needing most of their wares. There are still the homeless moving
from where they don’t live to where they won’t live.

There
are still more people who don’t speak English than do and young, pretty girls
from all over the world. In the afternoons there are hundreds of  colorful  skimpy bikinis packed tightly with those
girls, coming from the beach. Life is still an adventure and riding the Miami
Public Transportation System has proven to be a good experience. Life continues
to be good.