Crazy but not stupid

The one precaution we took was for Elvio to park the motorcycle down the road by the church when he came to pick me up. We may have been born yesterday, but not the day before yesterday. We could safely hypothesize (see? safety wasn't the absolute furthest thing from our minds) that for him to come roaring into the courtyard of our building on that thing would be unpopular with my parents.

They weren't microparenting enough to notice that on some dates we strolled out of the courtyard on foot instead of puttering out in the little Fiat. My parents had way too many kids, most of whom were misbehaving horridly, to focus in on any of my innocuous details. They were much too other-preoccupied to wonder, Hm, where's Elvio's car? Why would he choose to park out on the street where it's impossible to find a spot when he can be guaranteed a spot in the courtyard?

I'm lucky that since we usually went out in groups, the motorcycle wasn't the default mode of transportation. I'm lucky that he probably shared that thing with his two brothers, so it wasn't available as much as it could have been. I'm lucky that when we went up to the mountains to go skiing, the vehicle of choice was the Fiat.

Up in the mountains, quite another kind of safety challenge was underway. While far away in another hemisphere tourists were flocking to Acapulco to witness the famed cliff diving, Italians were engaged in an even more extreme sport, known only to themselves and the occasional scared witless American.

Come with me to the cliffside roads of Italy and experience the chilling wonders of Italian cliff driving.

The other vehicle

The thing I loved fourth most about Elvio was that he was not unduly preoccupied with being a man-man. Gender roles were all a big joke to him. He was prone to burst into song, usually mock opera, changing the words from Joe Green's Rigoletto, "La donna é mobile," which meant basically women change their minds at the drop of a hat, to "La donna é un mobile," which meant woman is a piece of furniture. Everything was lampoon material, including trends, social mores, male competitiveness -- and the like.

That's why I found it so peculiar to discover how crucially important it was to him to own a motorcycle the size of a horse. Equally perplexing was how he could've afforded such a thing in his sketchy state of employment. Somehow he acquired the thing and began showing up with it when we went out by ourselves. It took every ounce of his strength just to push it off the kickstand, but once he got it rolling, he was in hog heaven. There was no mention of helmets. What was the use of being on a motorcycle if your friends wouldn't recognize you roaring by with your hair flying in the wind and a girl on the back?

In reviewing my mental strategy for consenting to passenger-hood during my Italy years, I now recognize that it's exactly the same attitude one adopts when climbing into the buggy of an amusement park ride. Does one say, Where's my helmet? Does one say Do you have a license for this? Does one say Have you had safety training for this? No. One hops in willy-nilly with the unquestioned assumption that if this thing weren't safe, it wouldn't be allowed to operate.

So that's what I did. I hopped on, willy-nilly. I trusted the Italian driver to know how to drive like an Italian. Today I wouldn't. Today my mature mind would go further, and notice that Italians have ambulances and hospitals and graveyards just like everybody else, and that would be an indication of something.

We did take one small precaution, however.....

Elvio and his vehicles

Elvio was my buddy during the Naples years. The thing I loved most about Elvio was that though everyone thought he was My Boyfriend, he was in reality: Not My Boyfriend. The thing I loved second most was that as long as everybody thought he was My Boyfriend, he had the decency to be handsome, molto simpatico, and hilariously funny. He was thin, but not in an anorexic kind of way. He wore a perpetual look of amusement on his face, had thick wavy black hair, and a compulsion to twirl the corners of his mustache between his thumb and forefinger.

Grazie, Elvio, for being there next to me so that all those tiresome other boys would look elsewhere.

The thing I love third most about Elvio was that having him made it possible to go out with the person I really wanted to be with, namely Lucia. Lucia had become horribly unavailable to me since she'd started going out with the loathsome Paolo.
This way I got to hang out with my two favorite people, Lucia and Elvio -- though unfortunately nothing could be done about having to endure Paolo.

Elvio had the car that most other Italians had then, which was a Fiat 500. Though these Fiats were the size of washing machines, there was no limit to how may Italians could stuff themselves into one -- at which point they would roll up all the windows to protect against la corrente, and light their cigarettes.

Later I can explain how it is that half the population of Italy was conceived in these cars. Remind me. But at the moment the topic is vehicular safety -- which I would gladly continue with presently if not for the fact that I've run out of time.

Cultural Attitudes toward safety equipment in Italy

My friend Carla was visiting a few years ago. She stayed at my apartment and used Portland for a base to travel out from, usually by herself, which was gutsy of her since she doesn't speak a word of English. For a few days she went up to Seattle and took the obligatory ferry ride. While waiting for departure, she stood on the deck watching the scene on the dock. She saw a hefty woman ferry worker standing there, holding a line, getting ready to push off. When she got back to Portland, Carla made a great show of itemizing the safety equipment that bedecked this ferry worker: Hardhat! Life vest! Flashlight! Whistle! Construction boots! Radio! etc. "If this were Italy," said Carla, "if the passengers on an Italian ferry saw someone that prepared for disaster, they would stampede off that boat so fast!"

To the Italian way of thinking, what could it mean but that the dock workers knew something they weren't telling?

I often think of the Italians as I'm layering on my gear, and I can hear them laughing from across the big water. For more about Italians on safety, I could tell you about Elvio.

The Queen of Practical

The other day on my way across town I met Marsha. We were riding along one of the bike boulevards at the same speed, so we got to talking. That's the way biking is -- you're not all closed in from other humans, you're right out there.

For those of you not from Portland, bike boulevards are just the smaller streets through residential areas that are not major arterials and therefore are not highly traveled by cars. Cars don't like the stop signs every two blocks, they prefer the big noisy streets with the more infrequently placed stop lights. Certain of these residential streets, quite a number of them actually, have been designated as bike boulevards. Maps have been made showing these streets as having been designated for bikes. You can cross town on these, with minimal contact with the big hairy scary streets. Little arrows topping round discs with bike symbols are painted onto the surfaces of these streets. There are very few cars to contend with.

Anyway I was complimenting Martha on all her weather proof bike clothing, and she said she got it all at a construction supply store. We stopped in the middle of a street and she pulled a couple of other items out of her basket to show me -- most notably an orange construction vest. Much sturdier than most of the flimsy ones I've seen (and bought) at bike shops, and according to Marsha, much, much cheaper. She had protective safety glasses she got there for a dollar thirty nine, as opposed to the 37 dollars you might pay for them if they were labeled bike glasses and sold in a bike shop.

She has a major point there. I'm definitely going to go have a look. The store she named started with an S. I wrote it on my hand, but unfortunately have bathed since, and now I can't read it.

As for safety glasses, I don't need them....... since I am reputed to have emerged from the womb wearing a little pair of lizard specs. Meaning that as a lucky glasses wearer, I don't need yet another pair of glasses to keep debris from flying into my eyes. As for the other supplies, though, I use everything, and I'd love to know of a cheap source.

Next I have to tell you about the use or non-use of safety equipment in Italy.

The Effect of Motivation on Exercise

Somewhere over the decades I got the screwy idea into my head that it's only exercise if you're wearing exercise clothes and the time slot on your calendar says "work out." And no fair getting anything else accomplished at the same time. Among other sources, I actually read this in some magazine years ago -- that you can't count activities like vacuuming your entire house or gardening as exercise. I found that so discouraging.

I'm an extremely thorough vacuumer, but after that, whenever I vacuumed, even though I was super tired afterwards, I had this underlying awareness that it didn't really count. Good grief, with that in your mind it probably doesn't count -- because I think your psychological state really matters. Now, when I get ready to vacuum, I jump into it as if it were a workout. In fact, next time I do it I'm going to wear the heart monitor and do it as fast as I can. Just watch, next thing you know vacuuming will show up in Sports Illustrated. (Everyone always copies me.)

I used to ride all the way across town several times a week to withdraw into my hidey hole and write. Took me half an hour each way. Nowadays, since I'm always going out to work in Gresham, I don't get over to my hidey hole as much.

The ride to the train to Gresham only takes ten minutes. I'd been feeling horrible about this, and thinking that ten minutes was so short as to be worthless. But according to the heart monitor, even though it's a third the time it's far from worthless. Especially given that I leave the house so late I have to ride like......like my clothes are on fire. Which brings me back to yesterday's theme: Did I say that you'd have to ignite my clothing to get me to move quickly? I meant that I have to have a real reason. The reason can't be something like "See this line? You have to make it over this line ahead of all these other people." That's a fake reason. When I hear that, every molecule in my body answers: "No I don't. If I don't make it over that line, nothing bad will happen."

Whereas, if I didn't get to work on time, undesirable eventualities would occur.

New Toy: Heart Monitor/ Lie Detector

Yes. I finally bought one. Been meaning to try this for a long time. Expensive. but interesting. I'm finding out two things: 1, I'm lazier than I even thought. 2, I actually get quite a lot of exercise in my ordinary daily life.

One thing I've never been is competitive, especially in the physical arena. If someone else wants to get there first, I'll gladly step aside -- it makes absolutely no difference to my self-esteem. The good side is that if you are someone for whom getting there first is a peak experience, you're guaranteed to have one if you exercise with me. The downside is that you'd have to ignite my clothing to get me to move quickly.

This isn't the best situation in terms of getting my heart beating. My resting heart-rate (= on waking up) is about 52. I would love to let you think that this means I'm a great athlete, but in my case it means that : my heart is slow. I try to make myself exercise reasonably hard because I know it's good for the bod. Here's where the heart monitor comes in -- lots of times I'll think I'm working my tail off but when I check the heart monitor it says, "Actually, no, you're not."

I've entered all my settings -- my age and weight and all that -- so it's not that it's comparing me to other people. I've established my "zones" of where I should be in order to burn fuel. The ugly truth is that I'm a slug trapped in the body of a human. Occasionally someone tells me that I look like I'm in shape, and though I thank them, inside I feel like an impostor

But back to the good news:

I've been measuring my rides to and from the MAX station and guess what? That really IS exercise! It really counts. It's short, but I do it four times each work day - home to train, train to work, work to train, and train to home.

Next: Whatever gets your heart beating. (Should I take up coffee?)

Rider Advocates -- can you fight slobness with friendliness?

Sorry I'm late. I know this is way past tomorrow. About the Rider Advocates: I haven't seen hide nor hair of them since I last wrote -- which isn't to say they're not still out there. Anyway, as I was saying --

They swarm on, and.... maybe I shouldn't say swarm, since that makes them sound like a SWAT team. They mosey on. They make eye contact with people and say hello. They introduce who they are and what they're doing, which they describe as being available to advocate for passengers in any customer service issues that might come up. They chat with people, but they're not in-your-face friendly. I haven't wanted to slap any of them so far.

What they're doing is creating an amiable atmosphere among whoever's around them. One day I watched as they turned a whole section of the train into a friendly living room. A group of Spanish speaking passengers from out of town had just boarded. They sounded like educated professional types, and were very interested in this idea of Rider Advocates. They'd been on the subway systems of Europe and New York, and they were telling their tales, and comparing. One of them told about a stabbing he'd witnessed right on the New York subway. The Rider Advocates remained standing and most of the passengers were sitting down, in the door area of the train where the seats line the sides and face inward.

After about ten minutes of animated conversation among seven or eight participants, the guy I'd been talking to earlier, named Chris, noticed that a teenaged boy sitting among the group wasn't following the conversation. He walked over to him and introduced himself in English and asked him if he understood what the conversation was about, to which the boy answered no. So Chris translated it for him and started a conversation with him about the other conversation, which the boy seemed to appreciate.

The Rider Advocates I've heard so far are all flawlessly bilingual in both Spanish and English. They excel at people skills and the art of mingling. But I haven't seen them deal with any negative situations yet, so whether they would address them or not remains to be seen. Would they be willing to approach some super loudmouth blaring away on his cellphone? What would they say to a big muddy lout with his feet on the seat? Would they ask passengers to turn off their music? Would they let passengers know when their headphones are not working at ALL and serve only to make their music sound like a ten dollar transistor radio from the fifties?

It seems like a good approach -- a cocktail party without the drinks. But I wonder. Time will tell. I'll report in if I see them at work again.

Manners Police in Portland?

Well, not exactly. They're certainly not using the P word - that wouldn't go over well here. If you completed yesterday's assignment, you read about how the Japanese are doing it. Here they're calling them Rider Advocates.

I kept seeing these little bands of guys and gals in grey windbreakers with a shiny horizontal stripe across the middle. The other day while waiting on the Gresham Transit Center platform, there they were again. Seven of them. I started talking to one. "What are you guys?" I asked. "Is grey the new lime green?" I thought maybe the Wakenhut guys had changed their jackets. On the other hand, I was still seeing the lime green jackets around occasionally, so hmmmmm....... I was confused.

Oh wait! That reminds me, I have to tell you something: You remember my post about the Wackenhut guys? I happened to snap a picture of one slumped over in a coma? (The post is WAY too long - just scroll to the bottom of it for the action photo.) OK, several weeks after that, I googled the name Wackenhut just out of curiosity and --- this is TOOOO funny -- it just so happens they've gotten all kinds of bad press for being caught sleeping on the job! Like at nuclear power plants and stuff.

So you see? If you want the latest scoop on national trends, my blog is the place to go. You won't miss out on the news even if I don't read it myself. I have a way of picking up on what's happening and just transmitting it, even unknowingly. (WOOoooo!)

Anyway, back to the Guys & Gals in Grey. Oooops. Outa time. I had a long chat with one named Chris till the train came, then I boarded and watched the seven of them swarm on and snap into action. More about that tomorrow.

WWJD? Call the Manners Police

The BBC has a story called "'Manners police' hit Japan metros."
This is tooo good! You gotta read it.

Some excerpts:

"Badly behaved commuters riding on Yokohama's public transport will soon be risking a dressing-down. Newly appointed "etiquette police" will be asking travellers to turn down their headphones and give up their seats for their elders and betters.
---
"This perceived lapse included failing to offer your seat to pregnant and elderly people, chatting loudly on mobile phones, applying make-up in public, and listening to music on "leaky" headphones.
---
"But many of these enforcers will be accompanied by younger bodyguards, should their etiquette advice - diplomatically given, of course - not prove welcome."

OK, but here's the kicker: There's something similar brewing in Portland! I kid you not. I ran into it just the other day. And I'll tell you ALL ABOUT IT next time I post.

WWJD? Call the Manners Police

The BBC has a story called "'Manners police' hit Japan metros."
This is tooo good! You gotta read it.

Some excerpts:

"Badly behaved commuters riding on Yokohama's public transport will soon be risking a dressing-down. Newly appointed "etiquette police" will be asking travellers to turn down their headphones and give up their seats for their elders and betters.
---
"This perceived lapse included failing to offer your seat to pregnant and elderly people, chatting loudly on mobile phones, applying make-up in public, and listening to music on "leaky" headphones.
---
"But many of these enforcers will be accompanied by younger bodyguards, should their etiquette advice - diplomatically given, of course - not prove welcome."

OK, but here's the kicker: There's something similar brewing in Portland! I kid you not. I ran into it just the other day. And I'll tell you ALL ABOUT IT next time I post.