A taxident

Fellow bus chicks,

If you are planning to take the Elliott Bay Water Taxi on a windy evening, remember not to wear open-toed mules with three-inch heels–not even if you are going to visit your fashion-plate mother, who will no doubt raise her eyebrows at your sensible bus-chick shoes. Not even if, after you return from visiting your fashion-plate mother, you plan to attend a house party at a fancy downtown condo. You see, you will have to board the ferry/taxi from a floating dock, a floating wooden dock made from unevenly spaced planks. Sometimes, three-inch heels get caught in the spaces between planks. And you see, in the future (cute shoes or no), you’ll need your ankles to get around.

Feel the base

The point of a blog, or so I understand, is to chronicle your life as it happens. The problem with this: While life is happening, you don’t necessarily have time to chronicle. Life has been happening to me since my visit to Atlantic Base last Thursday, which is why I am just now getting around to writing about it. Let’s see what I can remember…

First, thanks to Sue Kattar, the (now former) base supervisor, who volunteered to give me a tour and took the time to do it four days before her retirement from Metro.

Seattle Transit trolley
Old school Seattle Transit trolley

The highlights:
• Meeting the bus drivers (some of whom I recognized from my rides) and seeing where they hang out when they’re not driving us around. I’m telling you, if I weren’t already marrying a software engineer, I’d marry a bus driver (or Tayshaun Prince). And if I could operate a vehicle larger than (for example) a baby-blue ’64 Impala with a white ragtop, white interior, and whitewall tires, I’d be one.

• Learning (some of) what it takes to run a bus system. There are tons of people behind the scenes–worrying about safety, and street closures, and route planning, and route assignments. There are even people whose job is to move buses around the lot (and park them in an order that corresponds to their scheduled departure times).
• Walking through the rows of trolley buses–from the cool, vintage Seattle Transit trolleys to the spanking new ones, complete with fancy iPod ad wraps.
• Touring the maintenance facility. Talk about some serious tools! (I even saw Brian Nussbaum–recognized him from his picture.)

The most interesting thing I learned: A single, 60-foot, articulated, hybrid, New Flyer bus costs almost a million dollars. (A standard 40-foot diesel is about 450k.) And again, I am compelled to quote our favorite bus chick pick-up artist:

“A bus is like a massive, pimping SUV with 4000 horse power and lots of 45 inch wheels. Can your ride compete with that, b*tch? I didn’t think so.”

Sanctimonious? Maybe. Suffocated? Definitely.

Yesterday, Adam and I raced for the cure in honor of my mom and everyone else we know who has dealt with a terminal illness. Afterwards, we raced for the 27. We were breathing heavily by the time we got on–a big mistake on this particular 27. You see, another of the (tiny handful of) drawbacks of a bus-dependent lifestyle is the occasional encounter with an unpleasant odor. (I’ll spare you the examples.) Sometimes, the odor can be escaped with a discreet move to another seat. At other times, it permeates the entire vehicle, creating what bus riders across our fair city not-so-affectionately refer to as a “funky bus.” When teen-aged girls, who are at once new to this phenomenon, hypersensitive to smells, and inclined to seek attention, encounter a funky bus, they tend to complain, loudly and for the duration of the ride. Experienced bus chicks learn to sit near an open window, bury their faces in their sleeves, and mentally travel to a happier place.

The foul (and thankfully, short) ride was a minor inconvenience in an otherwise great day, which included: the race (Did I mention that Sound Transit was one of the sponsors?), the Juneteenth parade (Flexcar participated!), a foot-ferry ride, and two graduation celebrations–one of which involved a very big cake, and the other of which involved drinks at the W. The last 27 left downtown at 12:25, right about the time the W celebration was winding down. Thankfully, that ride was funk free.

Are car-free people sanctimonious?

A couple of times in the last week, I’ve been confronted with some surprising assumptions about people who choose not to own cars. First, there was Knute Berger’s unwarranted (and, I might add, illogical) attack on me and a few other extreme “bionauts” who, apparently, mooch off our neighbors while simultaneously looking down our noses at them. (To read rebuttals to Knute’s argument, try Seattlest and The Stranger‘s Slog.)

And then there was the comment on one of my recent posts that ended on a less-than-positive note. After politely articulating his reasons for choosing to drive, the reader closed with this:

“And I’m really tired of the smug, sanctimonious sniveling of the car-free…”

So, I figured it was time to clear the air.

I can’t speak for other car-free types, but the intent of this blog is not to judge people (OK, except maybe the occasional pervert), whether they own cars or not. Hey, some of my best friends drive cars. (In fact, my very best friend–since the 7th grade–has five children and drives an Excursion.) My intention in writing this blog is to share my life choice–admittedly in the hope that others might adopt it–not to ridicule someone else’s.

So what’s with the judgment and presumptions about bussers and bikers?

Here are some of my readers’ thoughts on the subject:

From seabike_emily:

“…it is interesting that car users often protest a sense of sanctimony or superiority they perceive as coming from the car-independent. It’s a familiar objection, and there is a certain defensiveness in it, which is probably a good thing because it indicates at least some recognition of the problems of car use. My own thinking has come a long way from the car-having assumption to the car-free adventure. “Smug” is just bad spin on “highly satisfied” (guilty as charged ;-)). But in the case of typical American car users, their everyday, oblivious choices deliver such heavy consequences to everyone…Once you free yourself, it’s really hard to see all those negative consequences as being as justified as you once perceived them to be (when they remained in your, ahem, “blind spots”). And thus begin the smugness wars…

From ccitizen:

“My morning commute is in general very pleasant, but also includes everything from uninvited encounters with aggressive panhandlers to dangerous and frantic drivers. Smug attitude? Nah, I’m just really, really happy that I made it across the street alive.”

And now, your thoughts. No direct questions from me today. Let ’em rip!

How not to impress a bus chick

a bus chick
The unsuspecting bus chick our expert hopes to pick up

Today I found a Web page entitled (I kid you not), “How to pick up chicks at bus stops.” I’m choosing not link to the site (it’s not exactly family friendly), but it’s part of a series of “how to pick up chicks” advice pages, and (thankfully) there is an accompanying instructional video.

I can’t say the man’s tactics would work on this bus chick, but he is right about one thing:

“A bus is like a massive, pimping SUV with 4000 horse power and lots of 45 inch wheels. Can your ride compete with that, b*tch? I didn’t think so.”

Of course, his tactics aren’t much worse than those of the (ahem) “men” I tend to encounter at bus stops. Case in point: Last Thursday, at around 7 PM, at the 3 stop on 23rd between Cherry and Jefferson, a high-school-age kid actually said to me, “Mmm, mmm, mmm! How you doin’…” [pause] “…ma’am?”

They don’t turn into pumpkins–they just stop running

T. Byrd to Bus Chick:

“I’m sure this is a no-brainer question…but what’s the secret to not feeling like you’re always chasing down the bus? I swear I get up with enough time. Then next thing I know I’ve squandered away the time and I’m running down the street to make the bus. Mind you, I was lollygagging and missed the 9:25 bus. I didn’t have time to get my breakfast. So, I chose to take the 9:55 bus so I could get something to eat and not have to rush.) I made my shake but then got on the computer. Sure enough, I ended up playing frogger across 70th because I could see the bus was coming. Help me out. How do you keep yourself from getting on the bus frazzled and sweaty?”

This recent e-mail from my friend Tosha (who lives in Kirkland and works in Redmond and has recently started taking the bus to work) reminded me of one of the down sides of being a bus chick: living one’s life according to a bus schedule (also known as Buschickrella Syndrome). If a person who drives leaves her house five minutes late, it is likely that she will arrive at her destination five minutes late–unless, of course, traffic conditions change drastically in those five minutes. If a bus chick leaves her house five minutes late, it is likely that she will miss the bus she intended to catch, and depending on that bus’s schedule and the schedules of any buses she must transfer to, will arrive at her destination anywhere from 15 minutes to well over an hour late. I have countless examples of this, the most recent being yesterday, when I ran out of the house in a state of disarray (run in panty hose, half-done hair) to make sure I got to my brother‘s graduation on time. You see, on Sunday, the 48 runs every 30 minutes, and taking an extra three minutes with the flat iron would have meant terrible seats and, possibly, missing his walk across the stage.

As a bus chick, I am constantly aware of the clock. I time restaurant visits (“You get the check and I’ll run to the restroom, and we’ll meet in the front in five minutes.”), errands, family visits, and of course, work schedules. As I said to Tosha in my (less-than-helpful) response:

“I find it especially hard to be a bus rider when I’m at a party or event and the last bus leaves before I’m ready to go, or the buses run infrequently (like an hour apart). It means I have to rush my exit, which I hate, and it means I can’t let the evening flow spontaneously, which I also hate.”

Truth be told, it can be exhausting. This is not to say that it’s more exhausting than the false freedom of car ownership. (Seattle traffic and parking? Gas prices? Accidents? Pollution? No thanks.) It just means that we have a long way to go before living a public-transit-dependent life is as easy as it should be.

What do you guys think?

For those of you who live without cars: Do you feel the frustration of schedule dependence? On the other side, what do you see as the freedoms of living without a car?

For those of you who drive and bus: What adjustments do you make when you ride? Do you find it difficult to time your life to fit the schedules?

One more word about change

OK, more than one:

Contrary to the impression I gave some readers on Tuesday, I am not against light rail in Seattle. In fact, I am very, very for light rail in Seattle. I, too, think the changes Sound Transit is making to major streets (not just adding the rail, but also widening sidewalks, etc.) will help to combat carism in Rainier Valley, even if, as one reader pointed out, the southern end of MLK will continue accommodate four lanes of traffic but no bike-only lane.

Tuesday’s post was mostly about emotion–my from-the-gut reaction to the huge (positive and negative) impact that the introduction of rail will have on a region of this city I happen to really like–not because that region is necessarily well-planned or easy to navigate car-free, but because it has a strong character that I relate to (more on this in the comment I added to the post). As an admitted (and recovering) changephobe, I am already preparing to miss it.

“Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.” – Richard Hooker