Standing next to me, however, was a woman holding a large cardboard tray of doughnuts--at least three dozen. The aroma was miserably tempting, especially since I'd dashed out without breakfast.

My usual three-stop ride was interminable.

There I was, go-mug of coffee in hand, and doughnuts within sight and smell, but infinitely out of reach: Tantalus redux.

As we pulled up to the Staypuffed Marshmallow Dome, another woman, also exiting the train, teasinlgy offered the doughnut bearer: "Need help carrying those?"

Chuckling, I wondered why I hadn't thought of being so charitable. Too busy drooling.

But this Strib article got me thinking about linking again.

The article references high gas prices and a desire to go green as reasons for the surge in ridership. Probably true, and fine reasons. Surely the bridge collapse and need for alternate routes and means of commuting is playing a role too.

At any rate, welcome aboard, new transit riders. Clearly we need our elected officials to support the demand. And clearly I've got some work to do to update this site. The race is on.

Loud Talker [to no one in particular]: I s'pose all you college youngsters are studying for your midterms.

[no response]

Loud Talker: College is fun. I partied non-stop untill my junior year.

[no response]

Loud Talker: High school was easy. I never had to study until my junior. year.

[no response--driver assists passenger in a wheelchair, unlocking the safety straps.]

Loud Talker: There's a fine gentleman, helping others out. That's what a gentleman does.

[no response]

Driver: Next stop 13th.

[Loud Talker pulls cord, exits in silence. Narry a gentleman to help him out]

Alert reader and friend Sarah (I honestly didn't think I had any readers left, after months of very intermittent posting. And as for friends....) requests my incisive commentary on the story of the firing of Amtrak President David Gunn.

Incisive? The pressure's on. But here goes:

This seems like scapegoating, and more of the same habit of hurting Amtrak in the name of helping it.

Amtrak has never been adequately funded. Anti-transit types have always wanted it to fail, and the survivalist budget crumbs tossed its way have assured that.

The Bush administration wants to privatize Amtrak. Surprise, surpise. Privatization has worked so well with telecom (isn't Ma Bell being basically reassembled as SBC and Verizon?) and energy (Enron/California/pick your scandal), might as well try it with trains.

Maybe we should privatize the Interstate Highway system. Oh wait--that gets sufficient federal subsidies so that it actually works--in its inefficient, polluting, sprawl-inducing way. Hmmmm. Maybe highway privatization is an idea whose time has come....

Cologne?

Now that's freaky.

(I had encountered Gothic Guy on the train once before--when he boarded with several other people--and I now remembered the smell. He had been low on my suspect list then. But now, it was clear that the offending aroma entered the train with him.)

Cologne? Enough of it to make me instantly and fully sympathetic to anyone with elevated olfactory sensitivity. It almost knocked me over; it was nauseating; it was a wall of pointed, stinging assault on my nose, throat and eyes. Maybe that's the point. Visually, the Gothic look is old hat, co-opted and commercialized. It's lost its shock value, so go for the nose instead of the eyes.

I was only too glad to let him get off ahead of me and dash to catch a bus, chains and things clanking. I happily waited for the next one, taking what Lamaze coaches call "deep cleansing breaths" of downtown air. It took a lot of air to clear the system. Maybe this is what Teen 2 meantbelow. Maybe she was kissing Gothic Guy.

"Hello? Dad?"
[short pause]

"Finally. I've been trying to get you for days. Where have you been?"
[longer pause]

"Well yes, you are now, but where were you?"
[short pause]

"I was really worried. Don't do that again."
[I turn off to enter a building as she moves out of range]

Group of teenagers talking much louder than necessary.

Teen 2: When I kiss you my nose smells weird.
Teen 1: Say what?
Teen 2: My nose. When I kiss you it smells weird.
Teen 1: That's wack.

[very brief pasue]

Teen 3: Nobody ever does that wall.
Teen 1: What wall?
Teen 3 That one. No one ever does that.
Teen 1: Yeah they do.
Teen 3: It's clean....
Teen 1: Joe, you peep the new stuff up here?"
Joe's girlfriend, AKA Teen 2: "Dude, that's so wack."

[very brief pause]

Teen 1: Is it gonna be this crowded all the way to the Mall?
Me [exiting, not quite loud enough]: That's wack. All these people who look like 9-to-5 types commuting home from downtown are really mall rats in disguise.

Don't know about "Congestion-pricing" as the be-all and end-all of traffic jams, however. For instance, replace his hypothetical $14.00 an hour plumbing assistant with a a $5.15 per hour retail worker, and the math for Lexus Lanes isn't as compelling.

The President has asked Americans to drive less. This is the Oil Industry's Man, a President who's Press Secretary once called energy conservation "a big no."

And there's this quote from an AP article:

" 'If it makes sense for the citizen out there to curtail nonessential travel, it darn sure makes sense for federal employees,' Bush said. 'We can encourage employees to car pool or use mass transit, and we can shift peak electricity use to off-peak hours. There's ways for the federal government to lead when it comes to conservation.' "

This is un-American. How can we ever be an Ownership Society if our President is asking us to Own less gas?

And here's what it looks like from inside one of their Dome cars.

Rail fans get very enthused about the Alaska Railroad. It's a private corporation, a profitable one (it should be, given the fares), and so it's also often held up by privatizers as an example of what Amtrak might become.

That's not a fair analogy of course. The Alsaka Railroad is in a unique situation, in terms of intense tourist traffic, few roads, and what amounts to de facto subsidies by the tourist industry. Cars and highways have benefitted from massive government subsidies--rail shouldn't be expected to do without government support.

Anyway, we took one of the full-length dome cars in order to experience panoramic views--of course it was overcast and rainy, but still spectacular. Pictures at 11 (or so).

As the article mentions, those ads really do diminish riders' views outisde the train. From inside, the images are a bunch of annoying black dots that make me never want to buy an ipod or blueberries (I'll pick my berries up north, thanks very much). Come to think of it, annoying-black-dots-that-diminish-one's-perspective is an apt metaphor for advertising generally.

One of the ironies in the article:

Tom Black of 3M, which makes the shrink-wrap ads, thinks that "the bus and train wraps have become popular because they get ads out where people can see them from their cars. Said Black: 'People are spending so much more time in their cars.'"

"So much more time in their cars?" Not if they're riding the train--but then they're enveloped within a giant moving tube of vinyl film advertisement. Transit riders become marketing tools for the car-captive crowd, helping sell widgets (and blueberries) to drivers in their cars waiting at train crossings.

As Chaucer's Wife of Bath famously said, "Alle is for to selle."

HOURCAR is a new option in the Twin Cites for people who don't want (or need) to own a car, but would find one useful now and then.

This sort of thing could spark a wider revolution: instead of every exurban acreage owning a riding mower, a group of neighbors could share one. (OK, that's pretty radical).

This already happens informally with snowblowers in our neighborhood: Most homes don't have enough in the way of sidewalks and driveways to justify an emissions-heavy snowblower, but one or two people per block who do own one (often on a corner lot), and have so have so much fun revving the thing up two or three times per winter that they oftern clear the sidewalk on the whole block.

Sharing, rather than ownership, creates a society.

Where's the U.S. leadership in mass transit innovation? (Sorry, Hummers don't count.)