I'M TAKING THE CHINATOWN BUS

I'm going to New York City tomorrow to collect my Independent Publisher awards at a ceremony on Monday. Today I drove all over this funky neighborhood in Baltimore to figure out where to catch the Chinatown bus. As it turns out there's no bus station. It's not like Greyhound. It's a little weird bus service some Chinese people thought up to get you to and from New York City REAL CHEAP! The bus picks you up in front of some truck wash place. How gritty urban is that? I like buses. Some people HATE buses. They have an attitude toward them. When you mention buses, they froth at the mouth. It's like they feel a loss of control not being in their cars, or they feel low rent sitting on a bus with all those po-folk, or they have some other, more esoteric reason for hating buses. I like buses, as long as they're not too cold. If the buses weren't air conditioned I would be perfectly happy. I don't see why it has to be fifty-six degrees in a bus in the SUMMER and nice and warm in the WINTER. You expect to be a little chilly in the winter and WARM in the summer. But everywhere you go, you're nice and toasty in the winter and cold in the summer. It's stupid if you ask me. Have you ever been in Starbucks in July? It's like forty-six degrees in there.

I'm taking the bus to New York because I'm tired of driving. I love driving but it's all I do lately. Drive, drive drive. I want to park my ass down somewhere and let some driver spirit me up I-95 while I read and look at people doing their odd things. The bus will deposit me in Chinatown, New York City and then I'll hop a cab to the East Village to meet my cousins for dinner. Do you know that Chinatown ate up Little Italy? I'm not sure what happened. When I lived there in the down and dirty 70s Chinatown was a tiny network of neon-lit streets. Now it's practically taken over downtown New York. You can get bubble tea anywhere. But they don't serve it on the bus. That's most unfortunate.

Later, kids.