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under_control
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» BART love I'm sitting here in my cube still. I slept a bit and now I'm waiting for train service to start back up. (I'm wearing my leather biking jacket because it's a bit chilly in here and it's making all kinds of nice, comforting "leather rubbing" sounds as I move my arms about over the keyboard.) The train that I refer to is actually the light rail system for the Bay Area. It's called the Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART. It goes under the San Francisco Bay at 70mph and still takes over seven minutes to clear the tunnel. That's when I worry most about an earthquake, because who wants to die by drowning to death in a pitch black tube at the bottom of the bay? Not I. I like BART. It's grown on me. I've used it nearly every day for the last 2.5 years and I've come to learn it's idiosyncrasies. For example, I know that the first train on Sunday morning will be mostly empty and quiet. The people on the train will be groggy and bleary-eyed and many of them will sleep. Not a lot of young attractive people are riding the first train of the day. I also noticed that most of the hip urban-looking women get off at Powell St. station. These are the "shop-girls" who make up the work force for the many retail stores along Market St. in that part of town. I'm not the sort of person that a Powell St. Shop-girl would be interested in, but it's nice to see them. I find catching the last train of the night to be the most interesting BART experience. There's that element of danger, but I'm usually too tired to worry about it. There's also an interesting phenomenon that occurs on the post-midinight run. By 12:15am, the passengers on BART are almost 100% male. And when it's just a bunch of men sitting in a train car together the atmosphere is palpably different. Describing the difference is tricky, but I'll try. Nobody cares. Nobody is posturing. Everyone just wants to get to where they are going. But every once in a while, a woman will board one of these cars and she becomes that flower in the desert. Thirsty eyes keep returning to her and backbones straighten a bit. Suddenly a cell-phone call becomes important, or a rap beat rises up from a boom-box in the end seat. The men become the Men again, instead of the tired, worn down people who want to get home to bed. Me? I guess I'm no different. I sigh a bit and steal a few wistful glances. But I satisfy myself with that. I like to experience that little tiny "faling-in-love" effect that can happen during the 20 minute ride home--with a transfer at MacArthur. It keeps a skip in my heart...No wait, that's a bad thing.
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