Within Reach of the Driver

My left arm is baking.  It’s up against the window of this KingLong bus.  It’s a lovely blue sky out there in Hangzhou today but it’s hot as sin and the air conditioning in this bus is anemic.  The driver is right in front of me.  He’s taken his plastic, orange parking permit and has stood up, as we are standing still in traffic, to swat a fly which is buzzing above him flying now crawling, out of his reach.  The fly should stay up top.  He’d be fine.  But the fly is walking down the glass, slowly steadily to within reach of the driver and to his doom. 

We just advanced twenty feet.  I’m glad I’m not over anxious about the time just yet.  That will come later.  For now, I’ll arrive when I do.  This is the second year in a row I’ve attended this Ali Yunqi conference.  I’m looking out at the local dwellings and I can sympathize with all the people who live here.  Once something like a conference comes, normal life is upended.  In a smaller way, certainly this is what happens when the big auto show comes to our neighborhood in Shunyi.

Later this morning I’ve got to go to Shanghai.  I suspect that it will be very difficult to get a cab out of this event.  In my mind, when I booked the ticket it was imagined as a rather straightforward walk to the road and boarding a Di Di.  But given the degree of traffic and paucity of cabs, I may have to reconsider.  I don’t see how I could make a in the seventy-five minutes I’d mentally budgeted.  I couldn’t tell you if we were getting close or not just now.  I suppose this bus is faster than walking, but I’m not sure.  A bike might have been a much better call, but then surely I’d be a sweaty mess by now.

I am very glad it’s not my responsibility to drive this bus.  What an enormous leviathan this must be to steer left and right with so much large and small traffic on either side of you.  Still, driving the bus beats being a fly in a bus.  And he’s pulled over suddenly in a location of no certain distinction.  The doors have opened and everyone is piling out.  I wonder where we are.  I suppose it must be “here.”

Wednesday 9/19/18