Waiting for the bus

I try not to ride the bus. I almost said I almost never ride the bus, but that’s not really true. Sometimes it rains, or my bike has a flat tire like it did today. So it’s more fair to say I sometimes ride the bus. I really should have fixed the tire last night but I’m not entirely sure I have the right tubes and I got distracted by girl talk (in the sense of talking to girls, not Gregg Gillis or whatever the term actually means). Although, if I had fixed it, I wouldn’t have written this soon to be masterpiece so I’m not going to dwell on it.

Anyway.

Waiting

It’s always worse coming back from work. I’m not sure why, but my hypothesis is that 5–6 PM is the busiest commuting hour of the day and that family values are the culprit. Having no family or values, I should leave work later, however the double whammy of laziness and no express buses running after 6 PM is just too much disincentive.

Today I got to the stop at 5:30 PM and waited until 6:02 PM for a bus that didn’t come before walking a half mile to another stop and getting on a different line that dropped me further from my apartment than the first would have. The two lines are always a gamble, one seems slightly more reliable but the other is faster. I realize I could get an app that would tell me which buses are coming when, but that would make me a bus person, something I surely want to avoid. Waiting at the corner, peering down the street trying to read the bus lights from 2 blocks away, clicking my pen faster and faster and almost but not quite fantasizing about situations where I might need to use it violently — I don’t have the temperament for it.

Riding

There are two distinct riding modes, those obviously being seated and non-seated. In seated mode, I do two things: 1) read news and other inanities on my phone despite have already spent the past 30 minutes doing the same thing while waiting for the bus and 2) hope that the attractive girl next to me decides to fall asleep on my shoulder and come home with me or that the unattractive girl/man/child doesn’t do that. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in the former scenario, but I’ve imagined it enough times that it almost seems plausible. Sitting next to an attractive girl that is. The rest is clearly impossible. In non-seated mode I pretty much do the same thing I do in seated mode, except with the added prerogative of trying not to step on or be stepped on by other people.

Surprisingly, today I was in both seated mode and next to a not-so-unattractive girl which might have made it the most successful ride of my career except that I was too busy clicking my pen to really notice or think about the scenario described above. I instead thoroughly un-enjoyed it and thought about ways I could destroy family values.

Getting off

I usually jump out since I don’t trust my pen a second longer and also because I’m catching myself from falling after climbing over people. It’s almost an enormous relief to be out of there and walking home, and often I ask myself during that final stretch, why didn’t I walk the whole way? But as the blocks go on, my faded bus fury equally often reforms into a crystalline knife slashing through my amnesia to remind me that it’s because I hate walking and I almost wish I was back on the bus.

Tonight was no exception, I leaped out the inwardly opening doors into an excruciatingly terrible march. Every step reeked of poor decisions compounded by the passing joggers, compounded again by their dogs. I needed at least an hour, closer two hours of food therapy, hot shower therapy, 3 or 4 beers therapy. Their powers combined eventually did the trick and I am now back to my usual effervescent self. Unfortunately my bike still has a flat tire.

Fuck.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I hate waiting for the bus.

P.S. Tony see above as explanation for why I didn’t want to go with you to salsa dancing class tonight. Sorry.