My flight from Portland to Sacramento has been delayed by about half an hour, and I am pretty happy about that. It’s given me this chance to sit and relax in a place that isn’t a hotel room, for just a few minutes.

I’ve done more traveling in the past three months than I have throughout the rest of my entire life. No matter where I’ve gone, I am truly amazed by how many people there are in the world. And it’s amazing how different they all are from each other. I had grown up in small suburban towns surrounding San Jose, California; and I spent thirteen years in Davis, California, a college town of about 50,000 people. So I’m used to throngs of people, but not the teeming throngs like I’ve encountered in Portland and Boston. I imagine that if I ever end up in New York or London or Paris, I’ll encounter even larger groups of people, and be amazed all over again.

"The Human Aquarium" is what my boss called Boston. While we walked down Newbury Street looking for a pub, we must have passed hundreds of people milling around; business people in expensive clothes, homeless people pushing shopping carts, college students with pink hair and ripped clothing, and so on. While we drank our beers, I sat back and watched the crowds passing outside, impressed by the sheer numbers of people, and how none of them looked like anyone I knew. One of the cool things about having lived in Davis for so long is that I could go anywhere in the town and see at least two or three people that I knew. I wouldn’t always talk to them or spend time with them, but I would at least wave and exchange a greeting with them. The same is true, to a lesser extent, in some of the major cities of California: if I were to spend a day in San Jose, I’d see at least one person I knew; and the same is true of San Francisco and Berkeley. It might even be true for Los Angeles; but since I have no intention of ever going to that city of my own will, I don’t expect to find out.

But in Boston, there was not a single familiar face who did not work for the same company that I work for. Perhaps it’s just my small-town breeding showing, but I really found this remarkable.

Right now it’s the middle of the day; an unusual time for me to be here at Portland International Airport. There’s definitely a different crowd here than when I arrive early on a Monday or leave late on a Thursday or Friday. For one thing, there are many more older people, and fewer business people. And the business people I’m seeing are of a different stripe than the ones I normally see; instead of really expensive suits and rich leather briefcases, they’re generally wearing jeans and faded shirts, carrying backpacks or imitation leather briefcases. They’re still making calls on their cell phones, of course; but now they’re older model cell phones, instead of the shiny Ericcson or Qualcomms with the headsets or the mouthpiece that dangles from the earpiece like a wire with a bulge in it. I notice that I’m the only one here with my laptop out and running; usually it’s the other way around. I’m usually the only one who hasn’t got my laptop out. Well, at least I’m not working.

There are a lot of individual personalities here; the business man who grunted at me when I tried to make a joke with him while waiting in line is now sitting sipping a cherry Slurpee and reading Alice in Wonderland; a woman across the concourse is wearing the ugliest dress I can conceive of, proving once again that the divide between what men find attractive and what women think that men find attractive is frequently vast; that business man over there, the only one wearing an expensive suit, has complemented his suit with a Scooby-Doo necktie. THere are a few people with frustrated, angry looks on their faces — and all too frequently of late I’ve been one of them — but most of the people here are just looking around, or even smiling.

I hold a number of unpopular opinions of people. For example, I generally believe that people aren’t all that stupid (well, at least no stupider than I am), and that most people are capable of extraordinary accomplishments; that everyone has the ability to be happy, and that many people actually are; and I believe that, if given the choice, almost everyone would choose to be good. My own experiences with people have generally born out the validity of these opinions.

Fifteen minutes later, and I’m finishing up this entry. I’ve just had a conversation with someone I recognized after all; my former boss from one of my previous positions at the University. The first person from Davis that I’ve recognized here in Portland; she’s headed up to Spokane, so she and I won’t be on the same flight, but it was surprising to see someone else here that I know. Perhaps this human aquarium that I share with everyone else isn’t as large as I originally thought.