Freezing, Book Reading, and Homeless Dudes
Posted by Ryan Woods
Have I mentioned before how much I love public transportation? Man it's a wonderful thing. The funny thing is that up until last week I had pretty much only gone to Outback and back (that is, since I've had a bus pass). I went on one easy trip across town to my parents but other than that it's been pretty routine. Well last week I had to go to the Laurelhurst area of Portland. It was to be an easy trip, two buses and a max ride. And it turned out to be an easy trip too, except for the fact that I missed the max by two minutes which set me back 15 and caused me to miss my bus by literally 1 minute which set me back another 15. It was frustrating. And it was bitingly cold. I was cold.
But on the good side, I started reading Under The Overpass on Monday and had it finished by Friday. Thank you mass transit system. That's three bus books down in one an a half months and a whole stack to go!
Here's the irony of the whole thing, Under The Overpass is about a couple of Christian guys who decided to live on the streets for 5 months. For some reason the book didn't interest me a whole lot before I started. Kind of gimmicky to me I thought. But in the end it was an exceptional book, an easy read, simple, and enlightening. The irony was that I was so flippin' cold and frustrated having to wait on the streets and all I wanted was to get back on the heated bus so that I could get back to reading my book about what it's like to live on the streets in cold weather, hot sun, without food, etc. When I got back home I thought about the fact that my total of 30 minutes on the cold street chilled me to the bone while others live there, sleep there, and are stuck there. It made me glad that Renovatus is handing out all sorts of warm clothes this week to those freezind dudes on the street. And it made me want to take the next homeless person I saw to Wendy's for lunch.
The End
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