SFO (San Francisco Airport - and, my aren't you smart if you noticed that SFA would make more sense) is 15 minutes from my mom's house with no traffic...1.5 hours with very bad traffic...and 2.5 hours when riding The Bayporter: airport shuttle from hell. ...but hell is nothing if not interesting.

I had already waited through two eternities by the time the shuttle guy assembled our rag-tag mix of seven for supposed nearby destinations. And of course I entertained myself by counting the number of other shuttles that raced off full of the lucky people who knew better than to choose The Bayporter. But soon enough the seven of had squeezed into the shuttle: the German boy to my left, the other guy to my right, the married couple in front of me, the gal my age next to them, and the lady riding shotgun. Everyone seemed normal enough at first sight, but of course you should never trust anyone who volunteers to ride shotgun in a shuttle—the others I immediately trusted.

We took a not too round-about and none-too-slow route away from the airport. I wouldn't call it a scary ride...yet. First to be released was the German boy staying in North Berkeley...lucky lucky him. The driver then got dangerously close to my neighborhood and I anxiously scooted foward in my seat, thinking I'd be next to go. Wait - before that, he got dangerously close to a parked car while executing a 2.5-point turn after the German boy drop-off. After that near miss, I was more than ready to exit the coach of horrors. But alas, salvation was not mine and we suddenly took a sharp right turn to head deep deep into the Berkeley hills. His apparent next move was to drop off the American/Finnish couple seated in front of me.

"Hey! That's my song playing on the radio" said the guy sitting next to me, who turned out to be a roving jazz musician. He must have deemed me interesting enough to waste his stories on because he entertained me with stories from his last gig as the shuttle lurched towards Kensington.

Second to escape was the Kensington gal - wait, make that the El Cerrito gal...she was either a Finance grad or a Law student because she knew ahead of time about the $1 difference between Kensington and El Cerrito destinations and had sneakily parked her car 2 blocks from her Kensington home just on the cheap side of the El Cerrito City Limits sign...and she was adamant the driver not refer to her as the Kensington dropoff, but the El Cerrito dropoff. Sheesh!

Then we headed back to the Berkeley Hills to drop off the couple - an American man and his Finnish wife. As they disemarked, the remainder of us (the woman riding shotgun, myself and the jazz dude) noticed the wife was disabled and watched as it took the husband and bus driver (sans handicapped-friendly vehicle I noticed at this point) a couple more eternities to help her from the bus. They finally had her safely out of the vehicle and the driver negotiated a stunning 11-point turn and headed down the hill towards my house.

As we wound our way down the hill, the woman riding shotgun took it upon herself to proclaim how noble it was for that American man to take care of a terminally ill Finnish woman...a regular Kathie Lee Gifford, that shot-gunster. It was at this point the Jazz musician confided in me that the stewardess of his flight had given him a handful of single-serving liquor bottles to tide him over and he still had the whole handful left. He downed one without flinching and then offered me my pick of the remainder. I was very tempted, but decided to decline the generous offer. After all, I figured I was off next and as long as the woman riding shotgun (WRS) didn't make any more social commentary I should be fine.

She (WRS) had blessed the equally talkative shuttle driver with her conversation up until this point (other than extracting the details of their entire history from the American/Finnish couple), but now decided to turn her attentions upon me:

WRS: "What high school did you go to?"

<I answer>

WRS: "Oh! Maybe you know my son: [son's name]"

Me: "Yes, but actually, I went to school with your daughter."

WRS: "Really? What's your name, sweetie?"

<I answer> And let me point out that by now I am thoroughly embarrassed, being at that awkward age where I'm deeply offended if I don't get carded at the grocery store checkstand, but other times I'd like to be taken as a full-fledged grownup...now maybe I was imagining things, but I think I noticed the musician slyly pocket his wetbar-in-a-hand. One minute I was getting all the details of the jazz dude's upcoming album and the next I was just some kid he had to quietly suffer through the remainder of this ride next to.

WRS: "Yes, I remember you! You were at [my daughter's] sixth grade birthday party!"

Oh goody. "This is the reason I don't come home more often" I muttered to the musician who chuckled and cracked open his second bottle...a bottle I decided was rightfully mine, but didn't demand of him. "What was that?" asked the WRS and I replied, "I wish I could come home more often, I said" and smiled.

None too soon we arrived at my house. The jazz musician hiccuped a goodbye and the WRS bid me a farewell and promised to give the kids my best and say hello to my mother if she bumped into her at the city fair the following Sunday. It was at this point I officially decided next time I would buy a one-way ticket back home before catching the Bayporter again.

9/98