Back in Austin, Maggie and I are getting around and avoiding the heat by riding the bus. It’s usually pretty uneventful, but coming home last night, the bus stopped at the University of Texas and let on a delicate young woman carrying a roll of chicken wire. We didn’t think much about that, but then a middle aged woman boarded carrying a tree branch, which she laid on the seat beside her as she rummaged through her enormous purse.

It turned out she was looking for her bus pass. In the mean time, Maggie saw a daily bus pass by our feet, so she picked it up, saw that it still had some time left on it, and gave it to the woman to use until her pass turned up. She thanked us profusely and gave us a cheery good-bye when the bus got to our stop, along with the bus driver, an introverted woman we had struck up a conversation with, and a guy in the back we hadn’t noticed until then. We never figured out what the branch and the roll of chicken wire were for. We’ll add that to life’s mysteries.