Variation on the Old Gray Dog

Riding the bus, walking in Baltimore, and the nature of revision

The Old Gray Dog. Fresh air stop at a truck stop, east of Pittsburgh.

Certain sections of Baltimore are really quite lovely at four in the morning in the sleet and snow. I went back through my travel writings from 2012, which you can find buried somewhere in the curated entries from my old American Re:visionary blog at rivercitymick.com, but I didn’t find much about my time through Baltimore. I remember thinking the public transit was pretty decent and easy to manage; but I didn’t spent any time here. I went through Baltimore visiting friends in D.C. and in Medford, Massachusetts.

So this is my first time actually spending any time in Baltimore: where Edgar Allen Poe is buried, where movie maker and auteur John Waters is from, and where Frank Zappa was born and where there is, according to the internet and its army of search agents a statue of the musician.

I wasn’t planning on walking through a short section of the outskirts of Baltimore at four in the morning, in the snow and sleet, carrying my pack. YES, I pack for such contingencies; unless I have an extremely planned trip, like planned down to the millisecond, or unless I know for a fact that I won’t end up walking unfamiliar streets in the middle of the night in any kind of weather, assuming I will have to carry everything with me is a default planning strategy. I used to be better at packing… more automatic. The contents of my rucksack were deliberately chosen, generally using the Rule off Three¹. I still used that rule when I packed for this Baltimore trip, keeping in mind that the trip has a purpose: it’s part of a gamble. I’m rewriting my life, again, after my job at the boat and the future I had planned with that job were pulled out from under me.

My rucksack.

This is a rewrite, but in my case, I am, in some ways, returning to a previous draft. The nice thing about returning to a previous draft is that you bring the experience of everything you wrote after that draft to bear on your words. Which is why I think I ended up wandering Baltimore at four in the morning.

The bus from Akron pulled into the Downtown Baltimore Bus Station exactly when it was scheduled to, around 3:30 in the morning. I’d already reserved a the second cheapest hotel room I could find in decent proximity of the conference. I knew I was way too early to check in a the downtown Motel 6; but I wasn’t sure about whether or not I could get away with staying in the us station. I’ve been run out of stations at night for not having a ticket to ride on that particular day. There was always some kind of precipitation: usually sleet, sometimes snow. Almost always cold. I couldn’t remember the guard shifts in the Baltimore station; at the Harrison Street Station in Chicago, there’s a ticket check around three in the morning; if you don’t have a ticket, you don’t stay in the station.

I’d made the motel reservation and prepaid, though. I thought I might have a decent shot at talking myself into an early check in; I was even willing to pay an additional day. 30 plus hours on the bus, and while I got some sleep, it wasn’t deep sleep, especially on the last leg out of Pittsburgh. I was tired. And a bed was a good gamble.

So I splurged for a Lyft to the motel, only to to be told by tired middle-aged Indian man that there was nothing he could do. The lobby of the Motel 6 Baltimore is the size of a closet. The night auditor works behind a wall with a tiny window made of bullet proof glass. This wasn’t a deal breaker for me. It was located near a transit line that went directly to the convention center. There was a bed and a shower. I had high hopes that the TV would work. But when he told me he couldn’t let me check in free, even if I paid for another night, that also meant there was nowhere there for me to wait. Then I asked him if there was someplace close that would be open where I could get a cup of coffee. The man waved me off like I was a nuisance.

I found a listing for a fast food restaurant less than two miles away that was open. So I went walking. The path took me through a deserted commercial district of tire stores, hair salons, auto parts, light industrial, and abandoned buildings. That melted into a residential neighborhood that looked like it was being built back up; brick row houses, a few neighborhood bars and small businesses. I made my way through at good clip. I didn’t mind the walk. Sleet and snow soften the urban sounds, and even at four in the morning, there are sounds. Machinery hums. HVAC hums. The random passing car. The even more random passing person.

The restaurant WAS open. Or, at least the drive thru was. Did you know that a lot of fast food places won’t serve people in the drive thru who aren’t at least on a bicycle? The time was a quarter to five and the dining room wouldn’t open until six.

There was a time when I’d find a dryish lace to loiter and wait. But these are not loitering days and a fortunate to have a little more cash on hand than I’ve had in the past. I decided to take my chances and go back to the bus station. I called a Lyft.

1. The Rule of Three is this: I pack no more less than three of any type of clothes: three tshirts (long or short sleeve) three pairs of socks, three long sleeve, three base layer, etc. Not necessarily including what I’m wearing. The Rule of Three also applies to whatever supplies I’m carrying, depending on the kind of trip I’m taking.