Spring Training for Rookie Bus Rider

My wife and daughter walked me to the corner, and I felt like a kid on his first day of school. We waved goodbye and I headed off to start my new life in Los Angeles.

A man without a car.

Injuries suffered in a bike accident will keep me from driving for a while, and I was catching a bus downtown from Silver Lake. Unfortunately, my journey began with a glitch.

Trucks rumbled by, streams of cars, scooters, a couple of bikes, a stray cat. No buses. I had misread a transit map and was standing at the wrong corner, backpack slung over my shoulder.

When this news finally penetrated, I started hoofing it to the correct location. Naturally, the 92 bus pulled up to the stop before I did. It braked, picked up passengers, and departed with a roar that resembled a guffaw.

Cars blew past me and I cursed every one, hoping their drivers hated the jobs they were racing to. I thought about going home to call one of the people who had offered rides. No fewer than 40 readers -- complete strangers all -- have offered to ferry me about the metropolis, and I may take somebody up on it one day.

But not this day. My misfortune, I’ve been telling myself, is an opportunity to learn something.

Not that this calmed my nerves. When you stand on a corner, left to the mercy of fixed routes and inflexible schedules, every passing minute is a fresh insult. Granted, this was partly my own fault. Had I called 1-800-COMMUTE, I would have known the right bus stop was less than a five-minute walk from my house.

It took 25 minutes for my coach to arrive. I stepped aboard the 92, paid my fare, and finally stopped grinding my teeth.

I’ve been on buses where I wanted to strangle annoying passengers. But on this one, four people were reading, most were daydreaming, and an air of civility filled the chamber. No one had the pleading look of madness you see on drivers entombed in their automobiles, the hours of their lives ticking away as they suffer world-class tie-ups.

“Are you local?” one woman asked a young man in a white Dodger jersey and a Dodger blue cap.

He nodded, then leaned in to help her plot a transfer.

“I need to get to the fashion district,” another passenger told the Dodger fan, who expertly guided him.

Here was my chance, I thought. A rookie at spring training, soaking up the wisdom of a savvy veteran. I moved closer to Jose Hernandez, 27, and asked if he knew the closest stop to my destination.

“It takes a while to figure it out,” he said as we plowed down Glendale Boulevard and under the Sunset Boulevard overpass, “but then it’s not bad.”

I asked where he was headed and he said Compton, to see his mother.

“They found a lump in her breast and she’s going to have an operation.”

I was both surprised and flattered that he would share this with me. Maybe he needed some assurance, I thought. I told him my wife was a medical writer who specialized in breast cancer treatment. With early detection, the chances are pretty good.

“I think she’ll be all right,” Jose Hernandez said.

We were coming up on Echo Park Lake, palm trees and the downtown skyline rising before us in the morning light. Hernandez told me he worked for a used car wholesaler, but his own car was broken down. He can get anywhere in L.A. on train and bus, though. After 10 years of navigating, he knows all the ups and downs.

“Sometimes you arrive just a little bit late, and you lose chances, like if you’re going for a job,” Hernandez said. “The worst thing is when you see a special at a store. Something’s for sale at a really good price, but you can’t buy it because it’s too much to carry home on the bus.”

I couldn’t help but notice that Hernandez’s Dodger jersey was blindingly white, as if he’d washed it in a nuclear reactor. I told him I hoped he wasn’t a Dodger fan. There’s a better chance of my becoming an astronaut than the Dodgers winning half their games this year.

“In 1988,” Hernandez said defensively, “everyone said the Dodgers had only two players -- Pedro Guerrero and Orel Hershiser. Then Kirk Gibson hits the home run and they win the World Series.”

We’ll see, I told him.

We skirted Angelino Heights, a neighborhood I seldom see, and cut left on Temple. I was into the rhythm now, bouncing along at a slow but comfortable pace, watching the rat race from the window. Hernandez was helping me with my Spanish as we cruised through downtown, and asked if I knew Japanese.

No, I said. You?

“I speak pretty good Japanese, some Korean and some Chinese,” he said, throwing out a few phrases in Japanese.

Where’d you learn it? I asked.

“On the street,” he said. “Different jobs I had in Asian neighborhoods, mostly when I worked for a snack shop.”

I took Jose Hernandez’s phone number and said I’d give him a call. Never know when I might get my hands on some Dodger tickets.

The bus stopped in front of The Times’ parking garage, a half-hour ride from Silver Lake.

Unfortunately, my job takes me in every direction. There will be days I’ll go batty without my car and curse MTA for one offense or another. But my first trip wasn’t bad. I had a chance encounter in a city designed to make them nearly impossible.

And it cost only $1.25 to let someone else worry about the traffic.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.