Yep. Oktoberfest again. This time at Fort Mason, not Munich. Still, it was my second Oktoberfest this month in two different parts of the world. Whee!!!! All I can say is that there's something to polka music and beer steins. In fact, there's just something about swaying back and forth, clinging steins, and singing "Take Me Home, Country Road" at the top of your lungs that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy towards humanity.

Or so I think.

Anyways, two observations of the whole experience.

The first bit concerns riding the bus. On MUNI, the whole front section of the bus is reserved for the eldery or the disabled. Totally makes sense. More times than not, when you get on the bus, there's not that many elderly or disabled riding so you have to sit in the front row. Which is fine, except you constantly have to be alert for the entire trip to make sure you don't take up the seat of an elderly or disabled person who gets on. There's a lot of pressure to it.

First of all, you can't slack off. The one moment you don't pay attention to who gets on the bus is the one moment some 85 year old woman with a cane gets on and needs a seat and everyone on the bus watches as totally oblivious you let's her work on by. Or, what could happen is if there's one of those questionable calls comes on. Like their kind of old, but not quite old enough to be senior citizen. Get up for them? What about if their not frail in any sort of way? There's a lot of 70 year olds who are probably in more shape than I am. And what qualifies someone as disabled? People get up for women with babies or people with lots of bags, but not all the time. In other words, it's a judgement call, judgements that you have to make within a few splits of a second. That's stressfull.

And for those who've been in the situation knows, what happens when it's obvious somebody needs a seat and all the seats are taken mainly by us young-ins. That's when this delicate communication dance starts between everyone to decide who gives up a seat and who doesn't. Sometimes a few people all try and make the move and it becomes a battle of who gets up first. And sometimes nobody is quite sure who is supposed to get up and so everyone looks back and forth, quickly, trying to communicate with each other who should do it. Or sometimes nobody really wants to get up, but everyone knows they should. So it becomes a Mexican standoff between people as they all dare each other to be the one to get up so they don't have to be the one who gets up.

The second observation concerns men's bathrooms. See, at Oktoberfest, there was long lines to get into the men's room. This isn't what we're used. Every guy in the line had this look on their face like something was wrong, like there's something off and there not sure what, they just know that it is- like everyone was forming in their head some scheme to get out of this situation but not sure what. I, for instance, was sure there had to be another bathroom or another way, but just didn't know what. I mean, I had even gone all the way to the other side to go, but the line was such that I thought I'd be clever and go across the way to check out that bathroom. Because there's never really long lines for the men's room.

The other thing that occurs is because woman know they have to wait for a long time, go early in the "needing to use the bathroom" stage. Guys don't. Because we just assume it'll be easy. So we go when we kind of have to go and when we get in a long line, we're much farther along than women. What happened on Saturday is that after about fifteen minutes, almost every guy who had been in line for a long time was busy hopping on one leg or two or crossing their legs or swaying to and fro- anything to hold it in.

Not fun, I'se tell ya.