Public Transportation: Part 1 - A Bummer of an Experience

Tonight, I decided to take the bus home. I felt that I should do my part in helping the environment. Also, I wanted to save a little money and avoid paying the cab fare.

In retrospect, I should have taken the fucking cab.


It was 9pm and it was freezing cold. As I got out of the train station, I thought, maybe I should save this experiment for another time. However, I really wanted to know how to get home using the bus rather than paying the ridiculous cab fees so I figured, what the hell.

First, it was a pain in the ass figuring out what bus I was supposed to take. The bus station had 12 stops to choose from, all going to different destinations. The problem, of course, was that they all eventually went by the neighborhood that I was trying to go to. But depending on the bus, I could be home in 20 minutes or 2.5 hours.

After asking 7 people, I eventually found the bus stop. I had to ask 7 different people because each person sent me to the wrong place. When I went to one bus stop, the person told me I was in the wrong line and that I should go to another one. When I got there, they told me to go elsewhere, and so on and so on.

When I got to the appropriate stop, I looked at the bus schedule and found that the bus was on a 1 hour schedule; that is, the bus comes to the stop in one hour intervals. The reason for this was because after 9pm, there were very few buses operating the route.

I looked at the watch and it was 9:15. The next bus would arrive at 9:30. I thought to myself, "that's not too bad, I think I'll be a good Christian and wait this out without cursing out everyone". I texted my friend and told him of my little experiment and waited.

At 9:16, the wind started to pick up. It was freezing. The temperature dropped to 26 degrees (acoording to weather.com) and with wind chill, it was 16. Still, I figured I would wait it out.

9:30 had come and gone and now it was 9:40. There were no buses. I started to get pissed off and I was contemplating the cab option again. Just then, 3 buses simultaneously came into the bus terminal.

The bus I had to take was the 40. The three buses that came into the terminal were 60, 20, and "Main St. via Camberden". I didn't know what the fuck the third bus was but all three pulled up to my bus stop. I was very confused. None of the buses had the magic number 40 written on it. All three buses stopped and all three buses opened the doors. I decided I would ask the bus driver on the number 20 bus what the fuck was going on. I waited until the passengers boarded and I asked the driver, "is this the bus going to my destination?"

The bus driver smiled and said, "No, the bus you want is the one in front of me...leaving the station."

I thought, WHAT THE FUCK?!? I told him, "But that was the number 60. I thought I was supposed to look for the 40."

He replied, "That was the 40. He changed the sign right now."

Sure enough, when I looked up, the bus had changed the sign while I was walking up to the driver to ask my question. My number 40 drove away into the night.

I was really bummed and freezing. So, I hailed a cab and went home.


To be continued with concluding thoughts (Public Transportation: Part 2 - Smelly Conclusion)

Interesting People on Trains

There are many interesting people that ride the train. Everyday I encounter people acting weird or doing strange things. Today I sat near a 50 something woman who treated the train as her personal bathroom.

She first washed her hands with some wet naps and then she began furiously picking her nose with a paper towel. I guess she wanted to get every spec of nose crap out of the nose hole. She also drank her coke and then applied makeup and then lipstick. She then proceeded to wash her pits with her wet naps.

She made a phone call and talked really loud in a language I could not understand. It sounded eastern european but couldn't get a handle on the specific country. She looked at her mirror and brushed her hair. She opened up a bag full of food and ate snacks and drank her coke some more. She kept looking into her mirror to see if there were any more boogers in her nose.

She stood up suddenly and then fixed her pants. I guess her crotch was bothering her. She looks like the kind of person that cannot sit still for even a second.

Oh, I forgot to mention that she did this while sitting next to a stranger. The man was horrified that she was doing all of this next to him. He was probably wondering why he had to be stuck next to this woman. There were many many empty seats available on the train but she sat next to him.

She sat at her seat for about 10 seconds until she started rummaging through her bag again. This time she pulled out her magazine. I couldn't quite make out the entire title but it looked like "Artist's ______". She would read for about 10 seconds and then look in her bag. She read again and then stopped to fix her hair. This went on the entire time.

She wasn't the only weird person.

A 50 something man sitting near me had his jacket over his face the entire time. He looked like Dracula with his cape covering his face. I have no idea why he was doing this but he did it the entire time he was on the train. I could only see his eyes and they were nervously scanning the train for something. Strange to say the least.

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