THE BUS RIDE.  When I go to rent a car in Dallas, I discover that my driver’s license has expired, and that the only real option for me to get to Austin is aboard a bus.  I am pissed at myself, and get even more pissed when the shuttle to the bus station is late to pick me up.  Then I begin a conversation with Nelda, the shuttle coordinator.  She has a patient, pleasant demeanor, and it’s not this phony cheeriness that somebody in the home office scripted for her role, it’s for real.  It says to me as plainly as if she’s speaking it out loud that a delay in an airport shuttle bus, or having to take a bus instead of drive a rental car from Dallas to Austin is the least troublesome thing in the world.  And she’s right.  Nelda’s outlook reminds that we always have a choice how we see and react to setbacks, or to any situation for that matter.

My seat-mate on the bus, Luis, a college sophomore at Texas A&M-Commerce, and I have a good long conversation.  I chronicle the four-hour bus ride on Twitter, which gets pretty interesting when the two trailer park tweakers sitting behind us loudly share their woeful situations, including a warrant that’s out for one’s arrest (“I don’t know why, I took care of everything except that child support shit!”)  one’s attempt to eat a 15-pound hamburger and win 200 dollars, and how the cops in Pelican Bay, Texas, test your drug paraphernalia. John Abbott (@johnnyabbott), who performs with the great improv group, Trophy Wife, tweets me back, “Sometimes it takes a trip to Texas to learn what’s really going on in the California prison system.”