Bus Turistico

Tulip Sculpture -- the petals close in the evening.

I rode the tourist bus twice yesterday: the first time with Greg; the second time by myself. The third time this morning with Wyona. That makes me the expert in the group – at least with getting on and off the bus and with the headphones. On the first ride with Greg the sound was too loud and there was no way to change the volume. Greg and I wore them back behind on our ears, but still on our heads.

The second time I took the bus, there was not enough sound. I pressed one of the earphones to my ear, but that was good, for at least I was familiar with the music and since I didn’t want to hear it again I was good with concentrating on the audio when it was verbal.

Mural of Carlos -- a famous tango dancer

The third ride had the sound so loud that I noticed the man in front of us just wore his headphones around his neck and when the voice would come on, he would stretch one of them out from the neck position so that he could hear it just fine if he held it six inches away from one of his ears. This must have been the bus one of the reviewers was riding when they said, “Just don’t do it.”

Wyona had a different method of taking care of the noise. Our hats kept blowing off because of the wind on the top of the bus. She put on her hat, used the headphone to anchor the hat on her head, and then moved the anchoring ear phones above her ears. That made the sound just right and kept our hats in place.

“I wish we had a camera. No one would believe this,” she said. I wondered if all of that sound reverberating through our skull (but not through our ears) would change our I.Q,’s. At the end of the ride, we seemed pretty much the same as when we started the ride.

Low average.

Arta