4 posts tagged “adventures on the bus”

Ahh, public transportation.  Most of the time its a job perk, saves me commute time and gas money, prevents me from working completely insane hours (sometimes), stops me from having to kill idiot drivers, etc.

Lately I've been working long days and catching the 6:45 bus home.  I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't get up earlier so I can catch an earlier bus home.  The driver is a maniac!  60 miles per hour in a 25 and through a construction zone?  Check.  Gratuitous brake-slamming?  Check.  Removal of bus suspension system and shocks before undertaking bus route?  Check and check! 

Today's trip reminded me of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (?) where Freddy is driving the school bus full of kids off a cliff - I wanted to scream... at the driver to slow down.  I was talking to Amy on the way home today (as is our MO for weekdays) and she said the bus noises as we went through the construction zone sounded like someone firing a gun.

Could be worse¹!  He used to drive an earlier bus on the same route.  He almost ran a red light one afternoon and had to slam on the brakes so hard that someone fell down in the aisle.

I guess anything is better than the catshit breath guy sitting next to you and breathing in your general direction, though.

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¹ Random favorite thing from childhood reference:  Could Be Worse!  One of my favorite books.  I sometimes wonder what happened to it.

The bus was very interesting today.  And by interesting, I mean crappy.

The ride to work:  The catshit breath guy of yore was apparently on the bus I caught this morning, sitting up front, by himself.  When I started to get all my stuff together so I could get off at my stop, I looked toward the front of the bus to see him turned around, creepy hobbit-speak (thanks Amy!) notebook in hand (he's always scribbling something in his notebook), staring at me with a crazed expression on his face.  He stared at me as I walked up the aisle past him and exited the through the forward door.  Still staring as the bus drove past.

FUCKING CREEPY.

I ain't no supermodel, ya'll.  I daresay I'm rather average looking, somewhat geeky with the glasses, but definitely nothing to get excited about.  I do not understand this reaction.  I'm skeeved out, but I'm unsure if I should be concerned.  If he sits anywhere near me in the future, I will be moving to a different spot.

The ride home from work: Some guy fell ON me as the bus pulled away.  Given, the bus driver accelerated fairly quickly before this guy sat down, but c'mon!  Unless you've got an inner ear infection, isn't it a reasonable assumption that the bus may begin to move while you are walking to your seat and perhaps disrupt your balance?  Could you maybe, I don't know, PAY ATTENTION and brace yourself?!   Thankfully, he fell onto my knitting bag and then sort of laid on me for a second instead of sitting in my lap....

After a year of use and abuse, my first IPod has officially died, god rest its cute little soul.

About a month ago I started having to reset it every couple of days.  Last week, I had to restore it to factory settings and reload all my songs.  On Wednesday I got the Sad Mac face, but was able to set it to disk mode and get it to run again at the gym...  I got the Sad Mac face again on Thursday but was able to reset it one more time.  Alas, there was no resetting of the IPod this morning.  :(

I took it into the swanky-ass Apple Store at the Biltmore and asked the guy if it could be fixed.  He said that it could, but sometimes the fix takes a couple of weeks and costs almost as much as a new one.  I could not handle the bus without an IPod, and 90+ minutes of working out every night would seem like a goddamn eternity without my little soundtrack.

Yeah, fuck that.  I was tempted to get a cute little Nano (biggest size is 8 GB), but for the same price I got the sexy black 30 GB and a cute pink protective case with a belt clip (the old IPod was rather, ahem, well loved).  I turned in my old one to be recycled and got a 10% discount, woot!

Its funny to think that when I got the IPod last August, I wasn't sure how much use I'd get out of it, but a year later when it breaks, it renders 2.5 hours of my day unbearable.

Ah, the bus!

I really love taking the bus to work, to be honest, because it means I don't have to drive.  Driving gives me The Road Rage^TM.  I haven't been at my job quite a year yet, and I've read several books (Les Mis and the unabridged Lord of the rings) and learned how to knit.  It's one of my favorite job perks, oh, besides not being treated like an illiterate and/or retarded 12-year old.  But, I digress.

The commuter bus I ride is mostly used by other clean, well mannered professionals who also work downtown.  There are occasional wierdos, like the fidgety guy who sat next to me this morning and (I shit you not) shimmied his shoulders every three minutes.  There's the lady who looks like Rod Stewart after an extended crack binge.  And the overweight lady who expected me to hold her up when the bus driver decided to brake a lot one day.  But those are all stories for another time.

A couple of weeks ago, I left work a little early.  I like to put on my headphones, pull out my knitting, and just zone out and de-stress on my ride home, so I don't pay attention to much going on around me.  However, this particular afternoon, an older guy, about my height, sat next to me on the sideways bench seat in the center of the bus.

After he sat down, he looked toward the front of the bus (in my general direction) and then a second later there was this awful...  cat shit smell is the only way I can describe it. 

It took a couple of minutes for me to put it together that this horrible smell was this guy's breath.  I used to work at a place that treated its own wastewater, y'all.  This guy's breath was fucking NASTY.   I kinda had a headache that day and the smell made me want to puke, but I was able to hold it together for the ride home...

He sat next to me again on Thursday.  I hoped and prayed that the incident from a couple of weeks ago was not going to be repeated, that maybe he just had an empty stomach or something.

No.

Even worse this time.  I thought it was just me, but the older lady sitting across from me kept looking around quizzically, as if to say "what is that motherfucking SMELL?".  We eventually made eye contact, and I gestured with my eyes and a subtle head tilt to the guy next to me.  Her eyes grew wide and she had the same horrified expression on her face that I did.  Fortunately for her, she got off at the first bus stop.  I had another 5 minutes with this guy.

I wanted to ask him if he could stop breathing in my general direction.  And then he yawned...  I think I turned green because the guy sitting across from me gave me a strange look.  The thought of this guy trying to give me mouth to mouth if I passed out was enough impetus to keep me from appearing ill.  But, it may give me nightmares....

Then, much to my horror, it dawned on me that not only do this guys' poor coworkers have to suffer through this breath, but this mofo is MARRIED.  I cannot imagine what that must be like.  Maybe her olfactory cells died a painful death years ago and it doesn't bother her anymore.

I used to work with a guy in another office that had breath so bad, that you could smell it down the hall on occasion... but that was more of a stomach bile/puke smell and it tended to dissipate once he had something to eat.  But still.  These guys have no clue? Jesus Christ.

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Sidenote:  The funniest thing anyone has ever said to me to wake me up was after a night of partying in Vegas...  Actually, it was the night this picture was taken (that's my friend Amy and I during a long night at an Irish Pub in Vegas.  This picture is before we got insanely drunk and contemplated becoming band groupies...  Good times!)

One of the "girls" we went up there with called the morning we were leaving and woke me up with:
"Where is that cat?!"
"Huh?  What cat?"
"The cat that took a shit in my mouth!"

Maybe I should ask this guy to leave the poor cat at home...