As I board, I greet one of my regular drivers.
Driver (grinning): “Hey, you’ve got priority, right?”
Me (grinning harder): “You noticed.”
No one’s offered me a seat yet, but these days (second trimester and feelin’ fine), I don’t really need one.
I look forward to the day when I’m big enough for a driver to make the bus kneel for me.
It’s been a hard first half of the year: losing my mother, preparing to become a mother, and watching one of the people I am accustomed to mothering move 3,000 miles away. When I haven’t been feeling sad, I’ve been disoriented, rudderless, unsure.
On Tuesday, I saw this poem (written by Barbara Wolf) on the 48:
Changes
What I’ve learned from water
is to welcome change,
flow when I can, become snow when I must
then a mist, hovering over the Earth
or a fog, snarling traffic, or even an ice cube, tinkling in your drink.
It helped.
In NYC, workers who commute from the suburbs don’t need to bother with Transitman-style flasks; they can buy drinks while they ride.
From Sound Transit Andrew:
The city banned cigarettes in bars, and the smokers trooped out to the sidewalk. Trans fats in restaurants were next, and the French fry addicts mostly shrugged. But since the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it was considering banning alcohol on commuter trains, it has been a different story.
Bankers and brokers and blue-collar workers spoke out in defense of the tradition of a Scotch and soda or a cold Budweiser on the ride home to Huntington or Greenwich.
[…]
“It’s one of the things that makes this slog north or east palatable,” said Richard Shea, a public relations executive who helped start a group called Commuters Allied for Responsible Enjoyment, to defend what he described as “the romantic ideal” of the suburban commuter enjoying a drink on the way home — in his case, a Bud Light on the 6:52 to Chappaqua, in Westchester County.
(Source: New York Times)
Wow. I know commuting can be tedious, but…
Guess they don’t have any good mountains in New York. (Come home, Jeremy!) I’ll take a nice view of Tahoma over a can of beer anytime.
This is what happens when they put “lean bars” in shelters.
Here’s a closer view:
Ah, the resourcefulness (and creativity) of bus riders!
By the time the 48 was 15 minutes late, I was wishing for a TV (or something) to sit on, too.
The Elliott Bay Water Taxi pulls into the dock.
A four-year old boy, to his mother: “Mommy, can we ride the Water Taxi?”
Mother: “No, not today, sweetie.”
A classic, four-year old tantrum ensues.
Can’t say I blame the kid.
Saturday, June 2nd, the new (green!) schedules come out. Transportation Today lists the changes.
Biggest news:
• Added service (courtesy of Transit Now) on three South County routes: 166, 180, and 181
• Reopened Fremont Bridge (affects routes 26, 28, 31, and 74)
A question: Why does Metro start putting out the new schedules before they take effect? (Well, I guess I sort of understand why, but I don’t particularly like it.)
This month’s Golden Transfer goes to Howard Zinn–yes that Howard Zinn. I have no idea if the man rides public transportation (though he certainly strikes me as a bus nerd), but he sure knows how to write a comprehensive history. On this morning’s 48 ride, I was reading the most famous of his 20 books, A People’s History of the United States (Yes, I know I started it back in November, but life events required me to take a break, OK?) and was so completely engrossed by the chapter on the labor movements of the late 19th century that I darn near missed my stop. (I jumped up just as the driver was starting to close the doors.)
This in itself isn’t especially remarkable, except that I have an amazingly sensitive stop sense (I always know when my stop is coming, even if I’m not looking out the window–even if I’m sleeping), and I’m supremely anal about packing my things several blocks before it’s time for me to get off. In addition, I tend not to find nonfiction to be particularly engrossing. I think of it like vegetables–good for me, but not nearly as pleasurable as the dessert of my favorite fiction writers. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve missed my stop since childhood, and all of those incidents involved a novel. The fact that a history book had me in a the kind of trance usually reserved for Toni Morrison is worth noting–and rewarding.
So thank you, Dr. Zinn, for doing your part to keep bus chicks everywhere entertained–and educated–on their rides.
