A Sunday drive, bus-chick style

The MEHVA fall foliage tour turned out to be great fun. There were three buses full of people–60 riders total. Who knew these events were so popular?

Here’s the bus I rode:

I have to be real: This wasn’t the kind of “vintage” I was expecting. These buses were around when I was a kid, which–in my mind–just makes them old. They even had some of the signs I remember from my elementary school bus-riding days:

Follow the rules

Despite the rain, the views were lovely, though you can’t tell that from the pictures. (Hey, you try taking decent photos from inside a moving vehicle–through a rain-spattered window that won’t open.)

We stopped at the Black Diamond Bakery for lunch, and I got a chance to talk to MEHVA volunteers Jeff, John, and Warren, who gave up their Sunday afternoon to host this bus-chick friendly event.

Thanks, guys!

Next MEHVA excursion: the Christmas lights tour on December 9th. I’ll definitely be there.

Southbound 48, 8:40 PM

Some Husky fans are coming from drowning their sorrows (if you catch my drift) at various Montlake establishments, and the bus takes on the feel of a rowdy sports bar. A bus-wide discussion ensues. Most of the participants are (drunk) middle-aged men, but a few appear to be actual students. Two are sitting at the very front, holding court.

Husky fan 1, to everyone on the bus, especially his friend, “Drunk Terry,” who is sitting near the back door: “The first half was awesome. The second half was…Husky football!”

Buschick-friendly weekend events

Saturday, October 14th, noon:

After 18 long months under construction, Douglass-Truth Library will (finally) reopen its doors. Stop by for fanfare, refreshments, and some free bus reading.

Location: 23rd & Yesler (routes 4, 27, 48)
Cost: Free!

Sunday, October 15th, 11:00 AM:

MEHVA (Metro Employees Historic Vehicle Association), of August Golden Transfer fame, is hosting a four-hour trip (on an historic bus, no less) to view the fall colors in the Cascade foothills. The trip even includes a stop for lunch. Who says bus chicks can’t take Sunday drives?

Tour leaves from: 2nd & Main (y’all can find your way to Pioneer Square)
Cost: $5 (a steal, thanks to MEHVA’s dedicated volunteer drivers)

Defense wins championships

David Whitley, a sportswriter at the Orlando Sentinel has had enough of the “thrown under a bus” (as in, “He didn’t want to take the blame for the loss, so he threw his teammates under the bus.”) cliché. Whitley would like everyone–not just athletes–to give it a rest, already.

The Bus-Throw is slang for unfair criticism, usually for personal gain. As far as descriptions go, it certainly makes the point.

“Considering buses weigh 25,000 pounds, we do not recommend anyone be thrown under one,” said Bill Fay, communications specialist for Lynx.

The phrase offers an outstanding visual. And like cliches, it was clever the first two dozen times you heard it.

But eventually all cliches stop taking them one game at a time so they circle the wagons and throw out the record books and feel like kissing your sister so much that even John Madden stops using them.

Besides, Whitley wants to know, why is the bus so unfairly targeted?

Why not throw people under a car or a steamroller or John Daly? There were 77 deaths nationwide from bus accidents in 2004, the most recent year on record. That pales in comparison to the number of people run over by cars, motorcycles, bicycles and runaway shopping carts.

It appears, at least to this bus chick, that the hardworking (and underappreciated) form of transportation has somehow managed to get thrown under itself.

So that’s what the kids are wearing these days

This morning I awoke to a rather nasty nosebleed–the result, I am sure, of several days of head-cold-induced sneezing and blowing. It took some effort to stop it. Thanks to my piercing, the pinching method they taught us in elementary school isn’t quite as effective (or comfortable) as it once was.

This evening, on the 8, I sat near a boy in his early teens with a tampon (one of the non-applicator kind, of course) fitted snugly into his right nostril.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Ah ha, hush that fuss

The automotive industry is the largest advertiser in the world. Auto makers spend billions upon billions of dollars to convince us that cars (and trucks) are the keys to happiness, freedom, success, and an unlimited supply of hot chicks. Apparently, they’re also responsible for the Civil Rights Movement.

Or something.

You see, GM is now using Rosa Parks in an ad for a Chevy pick-up. Seth Stevenson reviewed the ad for Slate.

The spot: Singer John Mellencamp leans on the fender of a Chevy pickup, strumming an acoustic guitar. He sings, among other things, “This is our country.” Meanwhile, a montage of American moments flies by: Rosa Parks on a bus. Martin Luther King preaching to a crowd. Soldiers in Vietnam. Richard Nixon waving from his helicopter. And then modern moments: New Orleans buried by Katrina floodwaters. The two towers of light commemorating 9/11. As a big, shiny pickup rolls through an open field of wheat and then slows to a carefully posed stop, the off-screen announcer says, “This is our country. This is our truck. The all-new Chevy Silverado.”

This ad makes me–and, judging by my e-mail, some of you–very angry. It’s not OK to use images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11 to sell pickup trucks. It’s wrong. These images demand a little reverence and quiet contemplation. They are not meant to be backed with a crappy music track and then mushed together in a glib swirl of emotion tied to a product launch. Please, Chevy, have a modicum of shame next time.

Amen.

Rosa Parks Bus (source: Montgomery Transit)

I say, if you’re going to exploit the image of a woman who is no longer alive to defend herself, at least have the decency to do it in an ad for the vehicle she is associated with. It was, after all, a GM bus she was riding on the day of her historic arrest.

Bus crush

Every once in a while, I ride the bus with someone I find extremely compelling–and I don’t mean in the hot guy sort of way. Sometimes, they are beautiful people–handsome men or cute kids or women I admire. Mostly, though, they are folks I’d like to talk to–because they’re reading a good book, or wearing something cool, or just generally giving off an interesting vibe.

Today I rode the 8 with an old man who looked so much like my (deceased) grandpa I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It’s a good thing he got off shortly after I got on; I was this close to telling him so.

And speaking of car-free city sections…

I’d love to see Pike Place become one of them–and not just for festivals and Organic Farmer Days. Necessary traffic (restaurants picking up produce orders, for example) can be managed, but I don’t see any reason to allow through traffic. It diminishes the appeal (not to mention the safety) one of the few places in Seattle that’s ideal for walking. Besides, I’m sure the crowds of pedestrians in the street (overflowing from the too-narrow sidewalks) significantly diminish the appeal of driving.

Speaking of Morocco…

The Car-Free Cities site has an interesting study of the medina (pronounced medeena, and not to be confused with the wealthy suburb just east of us) in Fes.

Most Moroccan cities have medinas (old sections that predate European influence). I lived in one in Rabat (in the Oudaïa Kasbah) for most of the time I was in Morocco. Medinas are car-free because the streets are far too narrow to accommodate vehicles. They’re not necessarily models that can be applied to modern cities, but they are interesting, dynamic, bustling, and walkable in ways that no car-dominated neighborhood could be.

From the Fes study:

While the circumstances in Fes-al-Bali are not ideal…they have posed no significant barriers to the continuance of city life almost entirely free of cars and trucks. Despite the commercial difficulties with freight delivery, the area remains the commercial heart of a much larger city and draws large numbers of shoppers and merchants from other areas of the city.

Of course, to get to and from the medina, there’s always the bus.

Ecouter clandestinement

Because I am shy, nosy, and able to simultaneously process information from multiple sources, I am well-suited to one of my favorite bus-riding pastimes: eavesdropping. I am an expert eavesdropper. In fact, I am the Queen of Eavesdroppers. That is, as long as everyone I’m eavesdropping on is speaking English.

Despite my early plans to become a polyglot, the only foreign language I can speak well enough to claim (thanks to a few childhood years in Morocco and many years of study in the States) is French. Unfortunately, though I am able to carry on reasonable conversations, my French eavesdropping skills are pretty poor–so poor, in fact, that when I was in Paris last year, I was constantly frustrated by my inability to immerse myself in my fellow Metro riders’ business.

The Luxembourg Metro/RER station in Paris, where I first failed at French eavesdropping

This morning, as luck would have it, I was presented with an unexpected chance to practice my international listening skills. Two men sitting across from me on the 545 were having a full-on French conversation, and (oh, happy bus ride!) I understood it. Funny how that language can make an otherwise uninteresting exchange about office moves and South Lake Union condo purchases sound so sophisticated and fabulous.

Oh yeah–while I was disembarking, I caught the beginning of a more typical 545 conversation:

Hipster-geek 1: “Hey man. How’s it goin’?”
Hipster geek 2: “Other than the fact that my web server crapped out compiling ASP this morning, life is good.”