This guy stumbles on like a rock tumbling through an unstoppable river. An imposing physical presence. We're somewhere at the bottom of Rainier Valley. He's clad in a white oversized T-shirt that would be a dress on me, the shirt peeking out from under a  puffy black jacket of colossal proportions. He asks if I go to Genessee, pronouncing it "Jensee."
"Absolutely, yeah. And hey, I'd appreciate it if you kept that closed." I'm gesturing at his paper bag, which contains a bottle of you know what- something other than pink lemonade!
"Oh, it is."
"Thanks man, I appreciate you."
"No probl'm."

At Genessee, he mosies up , leaning forward, peering into the unknown distance. "I think I go one more."
"Oh no worries," I say. "We'll see if somebody else wants this [bus stop]. Thanks for tellin' me."
"Sorry 'bout tha,'" he says after watching me greet somebody getting on.

He's treading lightly, politely. I see him in the mirror, and in my periphery. Quarterback body, gold necklace, and a trim goatee, hints of jailhouse tats peeking out above the shirt.

"Oh, it's all good. So kinda right up there, by Safeway?"
"Yeah. Hey, uh, thank you, for doin,' for bein,'"
Hardcore manliness stops him short from an easy finish to the sentence, but the sentiment is no less real. I know what he means.
"Oh my pleasure man, it's no worries. I like bein' out here." 
"Thanks, dude." He feels more comfortable now, more revealing: "I'm new here. Jus' come up from California."
"Oh wha' part of California?"
"LA."
"Dude, right on!" I exclaim, preempting the next question all Angelinos ask each other, which is, 'what part of LA?' "I'm from LA too, I'm from South Gate!"
To this his eyes light up, all pretense and vulnerability falling away: "WHAAAAA, no way! That's just up from me, I'm from Lynwood!"
"No waaaayyy! Right there!" 
"Oh, you right over there. You in it."

This happens more often than one might imagine. On the 70 I took a couple toward the airport and discovered we all once lived on Firestone Boulevard in Downey. Recently on the 44 a woman overheard me discussing LA, and revealed that she'd come up from San Diego in '96. "There's a lot of us Californians taking refuge up here," I marveled. "There are," she responded. "Some folks don't like it, us bringin' our LA ways up here..."
"They'll just have to deal!"

Strangers in a strange land, no longer strangers. My friend looking for Genessee leans back in his chair in a way he couldn't before. Relaxed now. He'd felt comfortable enough in my space to share that vulnerability, that he was new here, and the payoff was worth it. We pass under the dark trees at Byron, making our own sunshine.

He seems particularly glad that we come from the same mad realm of South Central. The Jungle, as it's called. Whatever challenges he's up to here in the Valley, they'll be easy compared to life in the Jungle, and he knows I know that intimately.
"Out there, you know how they do,"
"Oh yeah!"
We're in fistpound handshake heaven.
"Be safe!" we say to each other at the end of the ride. It is not a pleasantry for us, but rather a genuine urging, a belief that the other's life is worth some extra caution. It's late, and dark, but we're both glowing.

Josh is in his late teens, African-American and something else, tall but not too tall. In our youth we sometimes oscillate between dialects, particularly when we have multiple backgrounds. Regional dialects and generational slang can surface on will for people of any age. Lyndon Johnson would speak differently based on who was in front of him, sometimes employing the heavy Texan twang, other times keeping things to a more civilized drawl. When people chat with me, especially younger folks, they're sometimes not quite sure how formally to style their language. I like when they start out hesitantly but gradually open up, easing back into their normal self. I find myself doing the same.

Josh didn't bother with any of that, though. He seemed comfortable from the get-go. He first accosted me with: "Yo, how old are you?
"Fifteen," I deadpanned, checking my blind spots.
"Naaaaw!"

We did the conversation where we discover my real age, working through the motions of a well-worn exchange, still enjoyable every time. This time I steered it in the direction of jobs. He asks how long I've been at it, when I started, and so on.

"Pay is good?"
"Oh, man."
Laughter.
"It is not bad." I remember my first job at the library, where I was thrilled to receive seven dollars and seventy-eight cents– over and over, with each new hour! "I'm never gonna complain about this job. Trying to justify that paycheck, you know?"
"Ah heard dat!"
"Where you work at?"
"I used to work the shipyards, getting' paid twenty-seven an hour."
"Wow, hey. Somebody's getting' paid." 
"Well, used to. Hey, you know them e-cigarrettes, the vapor ones?"
"Yeah yeah, the electronic things,"
"Are those allowed inside the bus?"
"That's a good ques-, actually they just changed that. I was talkin' about that with someone earlier today. It was legal, but now they're changing it so they're allowed only where real cigarettes is also allowed. How come, somebody givin' you beef?"
"Naw, I's jus' curious, couple drivers sayin' different stuff about the rules,"
"Hopefully they just ask you to put it away. You know, there's so many rules these days. You know how older folks talk about earlier times when there wasn't as many regulations?"
"Yeah,"
"I wanna get back to that time."
"I'm down with Metro, man."
"You and me both! So, working' in the shipyards. That's work."
"Yeah, I used to do welding-"
"Whoa-"
"-but I hadta get outta there, man, too many layoffs. Cause I got kids, bro."
"Okay, so now you lookin' for something a little more stable."
"Well, I got one now, I'm at the dispensary."
"Oh that's right, right there off Aurora. 
"My uncle is a boss there."
"There you go, helping each other out! Symbiotic relationship!"
"Yup yup! Well, actually iss my girlfriend's uncle."
"Oh right on, man. Shoot. Don't break up wit' her!"
"Aw no way, dude, never. She pregnant with my baby."
"That's a beautiful thing. Makin' it work."
"For sure! You always on this one?"
"Same time same place, every day!"
"Coo'. I see you around!"
"You too!"

As he bounced off at Bell Street, gliding over to his next bus, I realized he was the youngster who profanely but wisely counseled the agitated fellow described here. There are times when you realize all the acting, the facades of clothes and cool, are merely a vernacular for youngsters to cope with the impossible business of being an adolescent in the modern age. You realize, as I did listening to Josh's tone as he mentioned his girlfriend and baby, that there is in fact just as much depth of caring in there, and that over time the facades will peel away like so much dead snakeskin, and they'll blossom into the good people they always were. Moments like that make me believe in the future.

Let's see, where were we. Continuing our exploration of what trolley buses are, from the previous post~

All other trolley systems in the US have backup motors for dewirements or reroutes, and Metro's new fleet* will as well. But the fact that we have to drive without them now makes Seattle's trolley operators, in my humble estimation, the most skilled. You just can't mess up. The more backup features your vehicle has, the less you have to pay attention. This is one reason why, statistically, expensive luxury vehicles get into so many accidents. They're too safe.

So how exactly do these things work? Let's get technical for a moment:

You may have noticed from riding trolleys that the operator will often slow down in completely random areas like the middle of intersections, often while a short "beep" sound is heard. Is the driver daydreaming about parking there and walking off to lunch? Is he under the influence? No, he's just being a pro. The poles are passing through switches in the wire, called "special work." Special work is where lanes of wire intersect– the wire for buses on eastbound Pike crossing the wire for buses on northbound Third, for instance. The easiest way to lose poles is by driving too quickly through the special work- slowing down for them actually saves you time. 

The "beep" noise you hear if you're sitting at the front is the bus passing through a deadspot. For the duration of the time that beep noise is happening, there's no power in the overhead. Just as you can't splice two electrical wires of extension cords together, the sections where live wires intersect need to have "deadspots–" a section of as little as six inches or as much as several feet where one of the lanes of wire is dead, so the other can be live. You can identify the deadspots because they look like big suitcase handles above the wire, as seen below.** 

You have to slow down for a deadspot, or else you might blow your poles by driving the shoes too quickly through the resistance the subtle changes in surface metal the deadspot provides. But you also can't slow down too much, or else you might come to a stop and subsequently get stuck, now forced into the embarrassing business of having to go out and figure out what to do with the poles.*** Nor can you just power through it with your foot on the floor- that arcs the power, causing the bus to shudder, and will sometime kills your vehicle. Not wise, especially on the steep hills.

How does the driver know where a deadspot is? You have to memorize them. Some operators get a feel for the rhythm of the intersections, remembering they need to slow down here or there. I and other drivers take a more fastidious approach. I like having landmarks. I want to know, down to the inch, where each deadspot is. Thus, I'll memorize landmarks for where the front of the bus as we pass through each deadspot. This mailbox, for example, that birch tree, or the "open" sign in the Vietnamese market– right as the front doors pass by those, I hear the beep. Perfect. 

Only one of the lanes of wire in a crossing of wires has a deadspot. The other remains live. In the planning of the trolley network, the lane of the wire with the live current generally goes to the direction of travel that needs it most in that moment, perhaps because of an incline or a turn. For example, the left turn from southbound Third onto eastbound James, pictured below, has no deadspots, while the northbound wire on Third there does; the turning bus needs the live wire more because he's about to go up an incline. Makes sense (On the other hand, we won't talk about that left turn from Madison onto 15th!). 

How do buses switch from one lane of wire to another? In Seattle there are two ways of doing this, specific to the way each switch is built. Often you put on your turn signal, and this sends a radio signal to the Fahslabend switch in the wire, causing the metal tracks to shift, as on a railroad. You can hear a metallic "click" when this happens. Many operators drive with their window open so they hear everything going on upstairs and can more easily navigate the wire. It's also easier to wave to your compatriots driving across the street! Atlantic's (the trolley base) drivers are more tightly knit, as we need to work together more intimately then other drivers do. There's also the shared camaraderie of doing what is variously considered the best, hardest, worst, greatest and toughest work.

As your poles pass through the switched track, the tracks reset so the next coach passing through isn't also forced onto the wire you chose. This is the case on Jackson westbound when turning onto northbound 4th. If you didn't hear the click, it's time to go out and move the poles.**** 

The system and concepts of trolleys were developed many decades ago, but sometimes you really don't need to fix things that work perfectly. There's no arguing with the fact there isn't a better way of moving a 30-60,000 pound vehicle through Seattle. Trolleys don't have exhaust pipes. They are a zero-emissions vehicle. The electric motors have very few moving parts, and basically last forever. They qualify for fixed-route status and thus receive federal funding. The cost-savings of not having to buy fuel for a vehicle for twenty years is quite literally incalculable. They have more torque and better braking then diesels, are quieter, cleaner, more efficient and last longer. Matters like quietness, air quality, environmental justice, neighborhood character, lower road impacts- these may not be monetarily quantifiable advantages, but they need to be considered as the undeniable and important benefits that they are.*******

Aside from their advantages over diesel and hybrid buses, they also surpass streetcars (the latest in politically popular transportation fads) for a number of reasons we would be mindful to remember: they are dramatically cheaper to implement. It's impossible to overstate the price difference–  and they offer either comparable or slightly superior results. They are faster than streetcars. Rubber tires have greater traction than steel wheels on steel rails, making braking and the climbing of hills safer. They can maneuver around traffic and blocking incidents where a tram is rigidly forced into a path of travel. We've all been on the South Lake Union Streetcar when a few inches of a car in the way forces it to a standstill. Disabled trolley vehicles can pull off the roadway, whereas a streetcar essentially needs to break down on a side track to avoid blocking. Trolleys can pull to the curb to service zones, eliminating the need to construct islands in the street. Regenerative braking puts electricity back into the grid, conserving power.

Notes:

*The new trolleys will be purple! You heard it here first!

**Except on Broadway. Those new intersections at Pine, Madison, and Jefferson were subcontracted out to a different company for the streetcar construction, and that overhead wasn't built by Metro. You'll notice the wire looks different, is more fragile, moves the lanes of wire out to different widths than everywhere else in the system, and the deadspots are difficult to identify– just a black covering around the copper above the wire. See how the new wire at 3rd & Denny, built by Metro, is sturdier and results in less dewiring.

***Somehow there is almost always a way out of this situation. Usually there's another lane of wire you can use for a few feet. If the road is narrow enough (for those of us who've gotten stuck on that six-inch sectional insulator deadspot at 15th & John in Capitol Hill), you can use the wire on the other side of the street, so long as one pole is on live wire and the other is on grounding wire. 

****The "siding wire" (lane of wire you can pull over onto, so other trolleys can pass on the main wire) on both sides of 5th and Jackson is famously insensitive, and often won't recognize your coach. Those are two switches which could use an upgrade; for now, I find if I slow down to a near-stop the wire will hear my plea. The more often a switch is used, the more reliable it is.

*****Vancouver has a third type of switch, called a Power-on-Power-off. They use it instead of our Fahslabend turn-signal-activated switches. Up there, coasting through a switch versus powering through one determines if the wire will be triggered to switch your poles. Coaches are equipped with a toggle switch to do this in circumstances where accelerating through a switch would be unreasonable (going down a steep hill, for instance).

******Having said that: some words for new trolley drivers, if I may be so bold. Don't listen to operators who tell you they never lose their poles. Everyone loses poles sometime. Concentrate instead on giving a smooth ride- it is possible, even in a Breda. Learn the rules for weaving on Third, don't power through deadspots, and definitely don't worry about who's behind you. They were as new as you were once, and if they're impatient, that's their problem. Be the gold standard. Also keep in mind that at the end of the day, not hitting cars and trees is more important than staying on the wire! Aside from the wire, with respect to the higher volume of clientele and the grief they will give you: your job is not to be a human being, but a saint.

*******Didn't learn enough about trolleys reading his? Check out the 132-page evaluation done by Metro in 2011, which explains in more detail than I can about why that purchasing new trolleys is an advantageous solution for economical, operational, and quality-of-life reasons.

********What's that snazzy new vehicle in the last image? One of Vancouver, B.C.'s 282 New Flyer trolleys, the gold standard for a trolley system, if I may say so.

We're sitting at Third and Seneca northbound on the 3, a trolley bus. The passenger in front asks me what my favorite routes are.

"I really love doing the trolleys," I respond.
"Oh. I've never been on one of those," he says. I point out that he's sitting on one as we speak.

There may be more than one person out there who's not entirely sure what a trolley is, or who has perhaps never ridden one. In the interest of sharing my passion for them, and in particular enlightening our far-flung readers, I'm compelled to offer some information on what exactly trolleys are, and why they're so great. 

A trolley (or trolley bus, trolley coach, or trackless trolley) is a bus powered by connection to overhead wires. Poles extend from above the coach, connecting the bus to its power source. You're familiar with streetcars and light rail, which only need one overhead wire. Why does a trolley need two? Because with rail the electrical circuit is completed by the metal rails upon which the vehicle travels. Trolley buses, with their rubber tires, have no such metal contact point on the ground and thus need two wires to complete the circuit- one a live wire, the other a grounding (dead) wire. The grounding wire is usually the one closest to the sidewalk.

A trolley does not contain an engine or transmission, in the traditional senses of those words; there is simply a series of circuit boards inside the coach which direct power to a single gear. The "gas pedal," called a power pedal, is less like a gas pedal than a rheostat. Like a dimmer on a light bulb, you press it to adjust the amount of current being poured into the gear connecting to the rear axle. If you floor it, you're dumping 750 volts into the rear wheels, and you can fly up the steepest hill in the network– that would be the Queen Anne counterbalance, at 18.5 degrees– without a hitch (James Street is a close second, at 18.3 degrees. Why does the bus go so slowly down these hills? Simply for safety. Trolleys and diesels have a speed limit of 10mph downhill on these segments, to avoid plunging into Puget Sound. Buses weigh at least 30,000 pounds, after all!). 

Trolleys, like public transportation in general, are much more popular outside the US. Only six cities in North America have a  trolley system. In order of size, they are: Vancouver, B.C., Frisco, Seattle, Dayton, Philly, and a couple lines in Boston. Hilly cities benefit most from a trolley network. A trolley's torque is dramatically stronger than any conventional diesel engine, and thus they can handle hills much more easily. You're not shifting gears with an internal combustion engine, waiting around to get up speed– rather, you're just shoving current into that single gear, already flying. The agility with which they can take the hills is pretty astonishing, given how accustomed we are to large things in general always moving slowly. It's also worth pointing out that the added torque and better braking lend themselves to superior performance on flat stretches as well. 

Why are trolley bus brakes better? Trucks and diesel buses are equipped with engine retarders, which slow down the engine when you're coasting, so the regular air brake, called a service brake, doesn't have to do all the work of stopping such a huge vehicle. Trolley buses have "Dynamic Brakes," which are a step up from retarders; they perform the same end function, but rather than slowing down the engine, they actually reverse the thrust of the motor. The generator circuits of the traction motor are loaded down with electrical resistance, resisting the rotation of the generators and thereby slowing down the rotation of the wheels. Reverse thrusters are used to slow down airplanes. Is that better than a normal engine retarder and service brake? Abso-friggin-lutely. It also minimizes wear on friction-based braking elements, allowing the service brakes to last longer.

In the old days the poles were made of steel, as seen below, and they flew off all the time. Now they're made of fiberglass, and can stay on the wire with greater flexibility. 

You might notice drivers staring intently through their mirror at the back window– they're looking at the ropes outside, trying to get a sense of where the poles are above the coach. If the two ropes are vertical, then you're directly beneath of the wire, of course. When they start slanting, you're drifting away. 

When the ropes look like they're about to touch in the corner of the back window, that's as far out as you can go. The new trolley buses, arriving in 2015, will not have back windows (unheard of with trolleys), and this will make driving them quite a bit more challenging.

What happens when you go too far out from under the wire? The poles pop off. Nothing holds them onto the wire except air pressure. It's amazing to me that they don't pop off all the time, after every bump or turn in the road. A fellow named Max Schiemann developed all this in 1901, and he was one smart cookie. The reason there are ropes connecting the tips of the poles to the back of the coach is twofold: firstly, that way you can actually move the poles about without climbing on top of the coach. Secondly, the ropes supply tension. They are spring-loaded as well, and pull downward, although with only a fraction of the upward pressure the poles possess. This counterbalancing downward pull allows for the minimization of the effects of dips and potholes in the road– things that might otherwise throw the poles off. If one of your poles is coming off too often, you might go out and redo the tension on your ropes, which involves pulling out all the rope and re-winding it around the spring-loaded wheels on the back of the bus.

When the poles come off, there is no backup system for moving the vehicle. There is no emergency engine. You'd better hope there's wire your poles can reach, or a slope in the roadway for using gravity to drift back under the wire. Usually there is, but the margin for error is tiny. I find this just fantastic. It's totally exhilarating. It forces me to be in the present, and to concentrate. Sometimes on flat ground with no live wire overhead you'll be at a loss for what to do. The temptation is to simply push the bus a few inches and get back on live wire. A 60-foot Breda trolley is heavy, but trolleys are built to roll... is it possible to push a 55,000 vehicle with your bare hands? I won't tell you if I've done so. I'll simply say that I "haven't," since that would of course be breaking the rules!

That's part one. Click here for Part Two!

I tend not to throw around the word "epic" lightly. Its usage has changed in the last five years. For some people, it's a word used to describe the number of paper towels you've just bought, or the intensity of people's farts. Even respected film critics use it to describe 90-minute chamber indie dramas. For me, "epic" refers to ancient Greek poetry. It refers to films that approach three hours in length, or books like Zhivago and The Brothers Karamazov. But as many linguists will tell you, language, an ever-changing entity, is defined by how it is used, not by what those high-falutin' types think the rules are. In that spirit, I'm telling you now that I'm working on an epic, massive, gargantuan behemoth of a post (posts plural, actually) exploring what trolleys are. I've discovered that not nearly enough folks know about these lovely vehicles we're lucky enough to have in this city. I hope to put those monstrosities up later this week. For now, let's hear what these two oldsters have to say:

Two older Asian men give me very unexpected responses to my greetings: the first is a fellow at Rainier and Forest.
"Hi!" That's me, greeting him.
"Hi."
"How are you?"
"Good how're you?" he says in a thick accent.
"Good."
"You're very handsome," he says harshly, in a tone of dictatorial approval, without missing a beat. I laugh.

The second is a senior at Dearborn. I'm not expecting him to speak English. I greet him anyways, so he feels comfortable. I greet everybody. Tone of voice carries as much meaning as the words themselves. "Good afternoon," I say, expecting silence.
"Whassup my brudder!" he replies.

This guy's smiling, let me tell you. I thought I smiled a lot. He walks up at Pine southbound, first stop on the 7, not rushed, no stress, just happy: a white man in his craggy early sixties, deep lines around his eyes and a balding pate. His pants are scuffed and too short, exposing his ankles, making his shoes look oversized and Chaplinesque. In fact, his whole outfit reminded me of Charlie Chaplin- destitute, dark layered rags with holes, frayed fabric, sun-bleached blacks and grays. In place of the famous mustache was a scraggly, scruffy thin beard, words which described his form as a whole. Almond-shaped blue eyes radiated from his pale skin, entrenched in a seemingly permanent smile. 

He greeted me with, "Good afternoon. How are you doing today?"
"I'm doing just fine, and yourself?"
"Terrific," he beamed, positively glowing and rendering his slovenly appearance totally irrelevant.

"That's a nice-looking chess set." I'm referring to the large box under his arm. He and a man next to him begin discussing chess. This set is worth $147, apparently, and the bishops have capes on them.

As I turn from 2nd Extension onto Jackson, he says for no discernible reason, "thank you, bus driver."
"You're quite welcome!"
"Thank you."
"Oh, my pleasure."

Periodically he'll thank the people around him, just for being nice. Or he'll wish them a good day. He offers to help a woman with her bags, but she declines. He scoots out the way for a walker. Asks the people across from him how they're doing, all in a gentle voice and kind demeanor. I watch him in the mirror with curiosity and gladness, thinking, I wish everybody was like this.

"It's a game of logic," he's saying to his fellow passenger, a thin middle-aged man with a hat. 
"Logic and strategy," I interject.
"Logic and strategy."
"That takes a brain," replies Thin Hat Man. "I don't have one of those."
"Oh, don't say that!" I exclaim.
"Hey. That's what happens when you fall 6,000 feet from a helicopter."

And I thought I had things to complain about. Not true, I remind myself. Not true at all. That Mr. Hat Man had the grace and patience to nod and make eye contact when he got on, let alone wish me a good day as he left, stupefied me. That's what I call a modern miracle.

Chess Man thanks me profusely again as he steps out at Rainier and 39th. On the sidewalk is a stroller being pushed by a mother in her thirties, well-dressed and put together. "Good afternoon," he says to her in the same kind voice. She avoids his gaze, hurriedly walking past. Probably thought he was crazy. Is he crazy? No, everyone else is. I hope one day his attitude becomes the new normal. I spend the rest of the shift greeting people as he did.