Ruminations on ambulation
Los Angeles was everything I thought it would be. Big, rich, poor, Spanish, white, Asian, etc. Today I’m coming home.
This city has a surprisingly good rail and bus system, given the area it has to cover, and provides really good value for money (at least to the farepayer). Thumbs up, L.A.! The only problem with it is the extremely annoying sound they play on the green line. Whenever the train pulls into or leaves a station, they actually use a truncated version of a cloying noise from Windows 95 (can’t remember the name). The ticket machines also use the “ding.wav” sound from Windows. This was just chilling.
I’m getting ready to head back to the airport, obviously, and I get to play one of my favorite games. I love to see the look on the faces of the snippy ticket counter people when they realize that my giant yellow suitcase has, in fact, no top handle. (There’s a handle on the side, though.) They grope for it, their look of disdain changes to one of blankness, and then they realize: nothing in ticket-counter school has prepared me for this! That’s when I say, evenly, “Oh yes — the handle. You took it off.” It is one of the few ways of getting even with these people.
The handle was, in fact, removed by American Airlines on a flight from Denver to San Diego in 2002. It is a testament either to my cheapness, sluggishness, or sentimentality, that I have not yet replaced the entire suitcase, which now has huge ungainly gashes in the sides. But it was a gift, and such things are hard to throw away.