On those days when I can, when I wake up early enough and when the weather is cooler, I like to get Rufus out in the...

On those days when I can, when I wake up early enough and when the weather is cooler, I like to get Rufus out in the mornings and go for a long walk - just the two of us. This morning was one of those days. In the mid-30s and a wake up time about an hour earlier than necessary, I pulled on my walking shoes and grabbed the leash before stepping out the door with Rufus.

The walk we went on is somewhere around 3.5 miles, crossing many streets and one state highway before entering a state park.

On our return, where we had just over a mile to return home, we stood at the crosswalk waiting for eight lanes of traffic and the “Walk” signal before proceeding. As I stood there I noticed an elderly Asian woman standing not too far off, beneath a bus stop sign. A bus stop, I might add, that is so rarely used I didn’t even realize the stop was there and I’ve walked or driven past that point almost daily for years.

As Rufus and I waited for the light the woman called out, “Excuse me, sir. Do you know when the 30 comes? It takes so long.” Her English was broken, her accent thick. She tried to tell me she was riding the bus to the Asian market, which didn’t make any sense because there were no Asian markets to the south of that location, but half a dozen to the north. She pulled out her iPhone and used a translate app to draw out a few words, specifically the name of the Asian market she was looking for, which happened to be 2.8 miles to the north and labeled as a Korean market. I proved this to her by pulling it up on Google maps and trying to show her she was about to catch the wrong bus.

“This bus goes south,” I explained. “You want to go north.”

“I need the 30,” she kept repeating. Her translate app, when she showed me the screen, indicated she was translating from Korean and the market she was looking for was labeled a “Korean Market.” Not knowing any better I assumed she was Korean. This particular area has a high Korean population with a Korean barber and a Korean Catholic Church assisted living center within eyeshot, as well as a Korean-owned dry cleaners.

When I pulled out my Google Translate app and tried to convert English to Korean she told me, “No. I Chinese.”

I pulled up the local RTD (Regional Transportation District) website and found her a bus going north that would drop her off within a block or two of the market she was looking for, but the bus stop for that route was across the street and one block over, ironically, just across the street from the Korean assisted living center staffed by Korean Catholic nuns. The woman, however, didn’t want to budge. She kept telling me there was no bus stop across the street (there technically wasn’t, it was a block away) and she kept asking for the “30 bus.”

With my phone I pulled up a map of the bus route she needed to get to the Asian market and showed her where the stop was compared to where we were she still didn’t believe me. It wasn’t until the southbound bus finally arrived and the bus driver told her she was trying to catch the wrong bus that she finally relented and let me escort her across the street to the proper stop. I route home had me walking in that direction anyway, so it wasn’t an inconvenience and having been that person lost in a country where he doesn’t speak the language, I was immediately sympathetic to her plight. At that point I was tempted to go home, get the car and come back and get her, but aside from being slightly confused about where she was trying to get to, she seemed very competent and confident in herself.

When we arrived at the new bus stop I showed her my phone’s bus map making sure to the point out the route number and then show her the same route number on the stop, but she kept asking to “change to 30.”

According to the RTD website, the 30 Line runs on the west side of town, more than 15 miles away. It didn’t come anywhere near where we were or where she was headed. If she was trying to get to the 30 Line she would have to catch at least one in-between bus to get from the east side to the west side. I was hoping the people at the Asian market would be able to help her out better than I could at that point.

She thanked me profusely and I hoped nothing got lost in translation and that she truly was looking for the Asian market three miles to the north and not one much further away (again, there’s not one to the south of that location. As it was, we were standing on the cusp of white-flight territory. Everything further south was extremely white and extremely Republican).

For a minute I thought about hanging out with her to talk to the bus driver on her behalf, but the bus was more than 15 minutes out and, like I said, she seemed confident and competent, just turned around. I can only hope she made it to the Asian market, at least, and that I didn’t steer her in the wrong direction.

I don't know enough about Chinese and Korean languages to know how similar they are, especially as written, but as it stands right now, I'd have to tell anyone listening that she was a Chinese lady, her phone was picking up her handwriting as Korean and translating it to me in English. Again, I hope I got it right.

[Nearly unrelated photo]