When the automatic sliding doors at the downtown transit center open or close it sounds just like a barista turning the steam on full wide to heat up milk. That an actual espresso joint exists near one of the entrances is an example of a society-provided source of free amusement.

It’s deliciously awkward when a passenger pulls the cord for a drop-off request and, before reaching the designated drop-off point, the bus has to slow, stop, and wait in front of a red light. “Damn, yo. Bad timing on the cord pull. You got schooled.” As the bus sits in idle watching the flow of perpendicular traffic, the relentless push of the clock assaults the ding and automated voice declaration “Stop Requested!” that had accompanied the pulled cord, trying to force these auditory cues into distant memory, no longer relevant by the time the light turns green. Still, bus drivers rarely forget to pull over after they’ve crossed the intersection.

There are always at least two other passengers who get off the bus with me at my morning drop-off location outside the gate, so I’ve left it to one or the other of them to pull the cord. I’m drowsy in the mornings, enveloped in an invisible cocoon; it’s too early to force my fingers against the tight pressure of a plastic string. Besides, if I pulled it even only a couple days in a row, it would set a dangerous precedent, the other passengers expecting me to pull the cord each morning thereafter. The routine nature of the morning commute introduces some awkwardness of its own: since the bus driver, passengers, and bus stop are all reliably the same each morning, it shouldn’t be necessary for the cord to be pulled at all. Think of the hundreds of “Stop Requested!” declarations that could be avoided if the bus driver took a moment to say that pulling the cord was unnecessary, “I know you all get off there.” Maybe he wouldn’t feel right about providing passengers information that cuts the corners of his own employer’s written procedure for how to get off the bus where you want. Maybe he’s in love with the imaginary woman behind the voice; I guess as a bus driver you would have to at least like her. Maybe at the end of his shift he just stands inside the bus pulling the cord again and again to hear her voice, pulling quickly before she’s finished speaking so that all she says is “Stop, Stop, Stop.”

In at least one driver, their nicety communication is tied more strongly to their repeated physical action than to what is spoken to them by the passengers. The other day, a passenger getting off the bus said something like “have a good day” to the driver, an utterance that was not acknowledged for an awkward duration until, in conjunction with his opening the door, the driver said “have a good day” in a tone that was kind but seemingly oblivious to what the passenger had already said.

Last week on the bus an attractive girl asked me, in Polish, if I was from Poland. I’ve never wished more than then that I knew the language.

I’ve bought my tickets to Fairbanks for Nov. 25-29.