life in a different carpool lane

For a special treat, thought I'd cut & paste an email I received from my friend Rachel about her morning commute. This being a commute-related blog I figured it was relevant, even though it didn't happen in the van, but in a bus headed from Seattle to Tacoma. In Rachel's words:

So this morning I hauled my entirely decaf, somewhat hungover self onto the
bus, only to accidentally sit down in front of a talker. It took me awhile to figure out what the guy was talking about, but at some point it became apparent that he was preaching some message or another. As the people around him began to decline to interact (sleeping, pretending to sleep, flat saying no – I had my iPod in), he resorted to spreading his message via cellular towers. After semi-listening to him discuss his
message to the poor person on the other end of the phone, I heard him say, “People are totally obsessed with consummation, possessions, and money…” At this point, the guy next to me (who was apparently only pretending to sleep) snorted, and I laughed out loud. I can only assume he meant to say consumption, but hmm...

I guess this serves as fair warning that if you email about your commute it could end up on the world wide web.

Xzibit we need you

I really want to submit the van to "Pimp my Ride"(if it's still in production). We seriously need personal DVD players, flip down TVs, a refrigerator and some sort of water body running through the van. Oh, and more comfortable chairs.

So, a lot of the men on the van talk about cars. a lot. One guy, Tom, has an old Jag (I think, but it might be a different British car) that his wife drives. It apparently needs a lot of repairs, all of which have to be done by hand.

Yesterday, he went about detailing all of the repairs that the car is currently undergoing or has undergone recently to Jamie, the guy who always sits shot gun. Other than the upholstery being patched, I don't remember what all of the repairs were but after every single one Jamie would say, "I bet they have some special machine for that, right man?" And every time, Tom would respond, "no, Jamie they all have to be done by hand." The conversation went like this over and over and over again as every repair was discussed in detail. I was seriously questioning my sanity by the end of the dialogue, and am pretty sure I would have snapped and yelled something like, "DON'T YOU GET IT, JAMIE. IT ALL HAS TO BE DONE BY HAND. EVERYTHING. BY HAND. ALL OF IT." had it continued for much longer. But, it didn't and I didn't.