Get on the bus

Apr 26, 2007

I pulled into the driveway at 8:15pm tonight, just out of an exciting first meeting of a soon-to-organized association of Triangle-area science communicators (held at the beautiful Burroughs Wellcome Fund building), to see our friend, Butch, himself just parked in the driveway after driving straight down from Cleveland. Great surprise! — he greeted me with a six pack of Great Lakes Brewing Company Commodore Perry pale ale.

Butch is here to attend the Motor Bus Society annual convention, and will tour North Carolina’s bus depots, garages and facilities. He got his hobby of photographing buses from his father, who collected pictures of trains and buses.

Have you ever really looked at all the different types of buses? Look for them and observe.

Erin and I snapped pictures for Butch when we traveled around the world, and we presented him with an album of bus images from Vanuatu (Toyota vans), Australia (giant, plush touring buses), Thailand (jouncing blue buses with a ticket lady who helped us get to the mind-bogglingly claustrophic alley markets) and Chicago (good ol’ CTA).

If I could go back in time 30 or 40 years, I’d invest in touring bus manufacturers. I’d be wealthy, and cruising the country in my own mistersugar-mobile.

Anton Zuiker ☄