Yellow clay bus

I intentionally gave myself a long layover in Sydney on my way to Brisbane. It gave me a chance to catch up with a dear friend over lunch and spend time in a place for which I didn’t know I was homesick until the first time I visited. After landing and freshening up, my first order of business was coffee. Opera Bar, a café perched below the Sydney Opera House, offers one of the most iconic views in Sydney, a 180-degree panorama of the CBD, Harbour Bridge (with Luna Park on the far side), and the Opera House.

As I finished my coffee and got up to leave, I noticed a woman taking a picture. What I thought was an awkward selfie turned out to be a social experiment. Her niece had given her a small statue of a yellow clay bus. The directions taped to the bottom instructed whoever came across it to take a picture of it, post it online, and (at some point now or in the future) leave it behind for someone else to find.

As anyone who’s ever been in an Uber with me knows, I love meeting people and I love stories. The woman, who had come from Adelaide, motioned for me to pick up the bus. She liked that it might make its way to the States. Before heading off in the opposite direction, she called over her shoulder, “When you get tired of carrying it around, just put it down and leave it.”

Good advice.