My notes from the night I was homeless

This is a 3 part story on how I spent a night on the street in Seattle as an experiment to better understand the life of homeless people that I pass by every day:

• Part 1: What it means to be homeless, a personal experience
• Part 2: My notes from the night I was homeless
• Part 3: What I learned from being homeless

Part 2: My notes from the night I was homeless
These are the notes that I wrote down on paper while I was sleeping on the park bench. I knew even before I started that the kind of problems that I would run into would be completely different than the ones that I originally thought of. In fact, that was the case; the issues that I was mostly worried about never materialized.

But fist my notes from that night:

[About 2:00AM]I can't not find a cardboard box in the recycling bin outside of my house. The bin is usually full of boxes every single day that I pass by it, but not tonight of course. Well, I can live without it for now. I should just go the park and se what happens.

[About 2:10AM]I am sitting on a bench in a small park by Seattle Pike Place market. (Here is a picture of it from above). There is no one around except the occasional taxi cabs that drive by. It was freezing cold a few hours a go but now that a misty fog has covered the air it is not very cold anymore. Still, I can see my breath in the air. I am sleeping under a rain shelter in the park. This is the only covered place in the park.

[About 3:00 AM]A homeless guy came by circled around and is now sitting on the bench about 20 meters away from me. Maybe I should go talk to him...but I am just getting comfortable and I am too lazy to get out of the sleeping bag. OK, if he comes any closer I will just talk to him without having to get out of my sleeping bag.

[About 4:00AM]No one else is around. So far it has been pretty uneventful.
I was thinking that I would be socializing with people. I had already made up my story: "I am a student from Canada traveling around in the US. I have just arrived in Seattle a couple of hours a go. I am going to find a job to finance the rest of my trip."
This should convince anyone that I have no cash on me. But I guess being homeless can be pretty lonely. No one really talks to you.

[About 5:00AM]The constant sound of cars going by is very loud. I can't sleep with this much noise. The tiers make noise as they go over the steel joints of the elevated road, which is Highway 99, on the other side of the park. I can also hear the cargo trains going by. The rail road tracks are about 1 mile away. But I can still hear the screeching noise as the steel wheels grind over the steel rails. I can even hear this in my bedroom but because of the double sided window the sound is very much dampened.

[About 5:30AM]The bench under my sleeping bed is very hard. I keep shifting around but every position is uncomfortable. I am actually not cold yet. I am wearing too many layers of clouding.
One homeless person just passed by me. He was talking to someone else. But my head was completely inside the sleeping bag so I could not really see them.

[About 6:00AM]The vendors at the public market have started to show up. They are making more noise as they unload their boxes and drag them on the ground to their designated stall in the market. More noise. Man I can't sleep at all with all this noise.
I am actually cold now. It is getting windy and because I don't put any cardboard boxes around and on top of me the wind is getting into my sleeping bag. It was a rookie mistake to not look harder for card board boxes. It would have made a big difference.

[About 6:15]Ok. I am just too cold and can't sleep with all this noise. Experiment is over. I am going home.
The sun has not come up yet. On the way back home I didn’t see anyone on the street

[About 6:30]It is nice to be home. I never appriciate my warm bed this much.