Yo-Ho, Part 8 and last

Back to the MBTA

There's little to say about the return trip. My wife and I swapped seats for the flight home, which wasn't a total success. She got the middle seat and didn't sleep at all. I took the window seat, where I promptly discovered that a 757 window seat doesn't have quite enough headroom for me. Wedged in, I did sleep though, for about three or four hours. Then I dozed off for about 15 minutes at a time until we saw the sun rise (because the morons in the seat in front of us hadn't pulled the shade).

The high point of the return, oddly enough, didn't come until we caught our bus at Wonderland. Ah, those squeaky, smelly, grubby MBTA buses.

Note to M-A: early on Sunday morning, they're all prison buses. But I think we got your driver with a heart of gold.

As the bus was about to pull out, a guy on a bicycle pulled up and asked if he could get a ride to Central Square, since it had begun to rain. He said he forgot his Charlie Card and did a classic Wimpy routine of how he'd pay next time. The driver patiently said no about six different ways, then finally shrugged and let him aboard.

This was not your stereotypical suburban cyclist caught in the rain in his bright Italian jersey. This was one of those cyclists one sees here and there, who are on a bike because they can't drive. I'd say one OUI too many was the cause here.

A few minutes after we started, the driver called to this guy to come up. He came, clearly fearful that he was going to get thrown off after all. The driver handed him his own Charlie card, first ringing up this ride, and told him to keep it. Our poor wet cyclist was stammering in his gratitude, and the driver said "just do it for someone else sometime, OK?"

Sometimes ya gotta love this town.

Yosemite Reflections

Having reached an age when time, money and stamina are running out at about equal rates, it's unclear if we can return to Yosemite, but I'd like to try.

If we go back, we're inclined to camp at Tuolomne and visit the valley, not the other way around. From all reports, bears up there are as common as squirrels, but bigger and smarter. So we'd need to be a bit smarter...and a bit bolder.

Now, we're having a little fun about the lack of pictures of the bear, so pardon me for grabbing a teachable moment. From the perspective of the urban east, a Yosemite bear encounter sounds like a tall tale. It isn't. The unusual thing was that we had gone a full week without seeing a bear. People who live in that and other parts of bear country will tell you that humans are the intruders in bear habitat, not the other way around. They will say that in any incident involving property loss or injury, it is nearly always the human who is at fault for offering the bear a temptation it is not equipped to refuse.

Consider that ear tag on our bear. A bear caught breaking into a car or camp for the third time at Yosemite is a dead bear. The next bullet won't be rubber. Human stupidity is a large part of this problem, and so is simple oversight (think of that candle we lost). More than that, there is a big problem with skepticism. People who have not experienced Yosemite simply don't believe that, from dusk to dawn, you are as likely to meet a bear as a human being. Carry food with you and you're ten times as likely to meet a bear. Leave food in your car and you're quite likely to have a wrecked car, a whopping fine from NPS, and an unsympathetic insurer who won't cover you.

All of these are real threats, but not as real as the death of bears faced with temptation once too often. But too many people just don't believe it and treat the bear stories as tall tales until it's their unfastened bear box that's cleaned out, their car that is wrecked, or it's them on a narrow trail between a cub and its very angry mother. If I were making up a story, I'd be sure to give myself a more heroic role.

The park's weekly reports suggest that if you want to be scared of something in Yosemite, try the people planting marijuana in remote places along the western slopes. Parks law enforcement is breaking up these farms regularly, and the planters are packing serious heat. This is not something you want to stumble across by accident.

It's tough to say what the major national parks can--or should--do about crowds. This has been a problem as long as the parks have existed and been accessible by automobile. It strikes me that one option would be a public relations push on crowding in California itself. Over 90% of the cars I saw had California plates. Even deducting for rentals, California residents still account for the great majority of the visitors. Perhaps there could be an effort to encourage some of them to go elsewhere, maybe to California state parks: California could sure use the revenue.

Now I need better boots and more hiking.