Actually our eyes didn’t lock. My eye was behind a camera but still it had the feel of locking eyes. Even now, the next morning, every time I view this image I wonder who this woman is and where she was going. Did she really make eye contact or was she just staring into space wondering about what time she needed to leave for the airport to catch her flight on Monday? Should the monkey have run after the trolley screaming, “Stella, STELLLAAAA” to find out more about her?
The rather strange thing is that this looked like a trolley that rolled in from a stop in 1937. Did this whole thing ever even happen? Was it real? This didn’t look like the other trolleys at all. What was happening? Maybe there was a shift in the universe caused by a recent minor earthquake up the line in L.A. and this was some brief snippet of a past time that zoomed in and out of today. What would Steven Hawking say? Monkeys get so confused by life sometimes.
Other trolley images were much less worrisome. Maybe the universe reset itself.
Lacking a full understanding of the metaphysics of all this, Kongo snapped a couple of other images to remind himself where he was and that nothing unusual was going on in the universe. There was a trolley employee sitting on his sidewalk sweeper (they didn’t have those in 1937) parked behind a statue taking a sitting up nap where nobody could see him. Well, almost nobody. Monkeys have sharp eyes and a penchant for sunshine on orange vests. Then there were a couple of downtown high rises which typify San Diego architecture in the new century. Definitely not 1937. Yes, indeed 2014 was still there.
But still, what was with that trolley and the mysterious woman on it? Turns out that the universe was actually just fine, it was only a little monkey that went momentarily off kilter. It seems that the vintage trolley was a one-of-a-kind project that volunteers restored and now makes regular runs around the downtown loop. Read about it here. Still, Kongo is tempted to go back and board that trolley just to make sure.
If it really is a time machine, Kongo could make a list of stocks to buy in the 1950s, or what famous horse races or sports games to place bets on, or even how to do something like save the world from reverse mortgage or salad shooter commercials. Just think about how cool it would be if there really were trolley time machines. What would you do if you could board one? What stop would you get off at? Lots of things to wonder about from a single camera click.
Travel safe. Have fun. Wonder about things.