#4124

Once again I'm just too preoccupied to archive dive to see if this is a repeater. Nice bus, nothing special or weird. Regular driver was not there. Pretty sure Monday is one of his semi-regular days off. Wonder if there are substitute drivers? Like the guy today - does he have a regular route and once or twice a week subs on other routes? Does our regular guy sub on other routes? Might have to discourse with him about how these things work. Geez I ask too many questions.

Back of the bus sounded like a wannabe version of ESPN's sports center. Not exactly Monday morning quarterbacking, just lots of re-hashes of all the football games from yesterday. Fun to listen to, although not nearly as articulate and "clever" as ESPN - more like a "reality" sports center. About halfway through the ride this ASU student gets on (he's the one who asked about my tackle box and told another lady about an "excellent book on prayer"). He's familiar with the backseaters and always immediately joins the conversation. However, he never talks sports, it's always about engineering topics. Today he announced some grant that became available and started using terms like "electron compositor" and "rigorous polynomials" - in seconds, he was the only one talking and the whole bus became eerily silent. I didn't have the nerve to look to the back (fear of laughter on my part) as I could envision the slack jaws and glazed stares of the people who had, just moments before, been happily reviewing the sports news of the weekend. This guy came in and in his own special "flux capacitor" way, took the air completely out of the moment. One of the riders engaged him in conversation and slowly the others built back up their own sports talk. I'm pretty sure this guy has no clue what a damper he is to basic bus chatter and no one would ever tell him. Next time, I've just got to look at their faces to see if they are as I envision. Maybe, though, I should just let the visualization linger - could be far more entertaining than reality. Rigorous polynomials? What the .....???? Whew - it's a lot for the 6am Monday bus.