I work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and I am happy to do so. I also commute by bus more often than not, which I’m also happy to do. But now that we’re into the summer season, a huge influx of dorky college kids have flooded into Boulder, and we all compete for seats on the “GS” regional bus from Boulder and Golden and back each day, and this has been a source of irritation for me these last couple weeks, as the intern population has reached critical mass at NREL.

They are young enough to not fully grasp the idea of a line, or a queue — that embodiment of the “first come, first served” concept. No, the stragglers walk up to the front of the line, where their fellow geeks have congregated, knowing full well that the meager northbound bus population is barely able to hold us all. Strike One.

They yammer and giggle all the way up Rt. 93, unconcerned with real problems, and despite being the future geniuses of the world, they lack the basic skills to ring the fucking bell when their bus stop is coming up. This actually gave me great pleasure last week, as I observed the 27th Way stop getting bigger in the windshield, and all the interns blissfully ignorant (and giggling). Generally, some fully developed adults get off there (like me), and ensure the complex chore of dinging the dinger is handled. But on that day I was headed further north, so no ding from me. The 27th Way stop came and went, and suddenly about a dozen geek heads popped up from behind the seats like prairie dogs, wondering what the hell was going on. Once that stop was assuredly behind us, I slowly reached up the six inches, wrapped an index finger around the cord, and pulled. DING, you morons. So, that was fun. I got off with the geeks and took my local bus the rest of the way home, feeling sadly smug about the whole thing. But then yesterday, the geeks broke though my protective shield again.

One of Them was talking to another One about movies. Here’s a rough transcript:

Thing One: “do you know about a movie called ‘A Fish Called Wanda”?
Thing Two: “yeah.”
Thing One: “Oh, I had never heard of it (giggling ensues), what’s it about?”.
Thing Two: “oh, it’s like a comedy, it’s old, it’s like, from like, the sixties—”
Thing Two was cut off by my neighbor, another NREL dude and seemingly a tad older than the interns:
NREL Neighbor: “Oh man, you’re WAY off, that was like the 80’s.”
Thing Two: “Really? I thought it was black and white”.

Strike Two, punk.

I am really growing sick and tired of sciencey geeky youngsters who know how to deal with differential equations but don’t know how to ride a bus, not get taken at three card monte, and lack some very basic historical and cultural knowledge (even pop culture, for chrissakes!). I’m not looking for kids to know when the civil war ended (but that would be nice), I’m simply asking for these kids to know that there was a transoceanic cable across the Atlantic long before we had “satellites” handling things, and that there were funny movies before “Superbad” (which was a hysterical movie, BTW).

Gonna be a long summer.

I was riding to work, about to join the Foothills bike path when this dude making a right onto the Boulder Creek Path decides he’s just going to use the entire bike path to make his turn. Problem was, I was thinking I might just use the right half of the path myself.

We collided, I went flying up and over him and ended up on my back, thinking “what the hell just happened?” By the time I got to the office I was a little light headed and was starting to sense that I’d done some things that are definitely gonna hurt in the morning, and the collection of scrapes and bruises all over my body are testament to that. Worse than that is my right index finger, which apparently acted as cushioning for my brake lever when it slammed into the other bike. It’s swollen, purple and stings like hell, four hours after the incident. Gonna go get it looked at, I think.

I hope the other guy is alright. He seemed fine, but so did I at the time. My trusty On One commuter bike is fine; the front wheel is a little out of true and the saddle lost some leather, but otherwise it’s ready for more action.

I also think Boulder is rubbing off on me; instead of ripping him a new one for ruining my morning, I showed genuine concern for the guy, even after he fully admitted the crash was all his fault. If this was Jersey, I’d have been spewing expletives before I’d even landed.

First of all, this guy is essentially ripping off Walker Evans. Walker did it better, far better, and he did it seventy friggin’ years ago. But there’s more to this story.

The Walker Evans photos from his 1938 project are really haunting because they were taken with a hidden camera; they capture the very souls of New Yorkers trying to endure the daily grind of city life. These Bill Sullivan photos are more in the “caught on camera” vein, which is a little more obvious — more supermarket tabloid work than photographic art, and it annoys me that this is being peddled as the latter.

But the really disturbing thing is that all the people in the Sullivan piece look either really tired, really pissed off, really harried, or some combination of the three (Except for the dude walking through the turnstile with a brand new pair of Skyway TuffWheels (and you can’t help but feel happy for that guy (where in the hell did he find those gems, anyway?))).

Those turnstile photos reminded me of my life as a New Jerseyite commuting to Manhattan every day, and my daily experiences ebbing and flowing amidst the many different kinds of wildlife calling New York City home. Honestly, in retrospect, I hated it, and these photos illustrate quite well the mood of the average New Yorker: the “what are you lookin’ at”, the “ugh”, the I can’t take much more of this”, the “why am I doing this”, the “there’s got to be something better”; the “go fuck yourself”.

Well, after a year and a half of living 2,000 miles from New York City, I can say that there is something better, and that I wouldn’t trade this for the world, despite all the goddamned snow.

A year ago, I would have been one of those poor bastards shuffling along for a MILE to get to some other mode of transportation, cursing the whole way. A year ago, today’s latest regular dismal failure of the northeast corridor railway system would have likely hatched a profanity-laden tirade about how shitty my day was, followed by several gin and tonics.

But today, I rolled out of my house and took pictures of the goats (yeah, that’s right, goats) trimming the field across the street from my house, and arrived at the office 5-10 minutes later after dodging prarie dogs on the bike path and watching the occasional hawk.

So instead of complaints, you now get gloating. Sorry about that.