San Francisco, CA

The public radio station here is not so good. There is the announcer with the right stentorian voice, but his ad-libbing is awful. The one with an interesting voice and nice personality who cannot read the news without copious flubs. And it will take some time before I get used to traffic reports done in hushed, serious NPR tones. Especially when traffic issues in Tinytown tend to be appropriately tiny--slowdowns caused by debris in the road, and I imagine all these we're-all-free-and-western drivers barreling around with unsecured loads in their pickups. I particularly like that the station will tell you what it is--traffic is slowing down near Vallejo due to plastic buckets in the road. Or lawn chairs. Or cabbages. Today it is stuffed monkeys.

Denver, Colorado

I am wrestling two large cups of coffee into the elevator, sugar and spoons and other accoutrement threatening to spill out of my pockets at each step. He offers his assistance, but I eschew it, out of years of suspicious living, say I can handle it. "Like an 8 year old with chocolate milk!" he says, and his gentleness surprises me. I wish I had let him help.

Grand Junction, Colorado

I am looking at a sliver of the Rocky Mountains. The view is notched between two tanker cars, across a field of railroad tracks. I am standing at the end of the platform. I had been walking alone, but here comes the circus now.

Carson City, Nevada

It's high, dry and stony. People get used up fast here.