Tag Archives: bus nerd

Transit-inspired language

In May of 2005, Bus Nerd and I took a trip to Paris. I speak French fairly fluently and so gave him a few lessons (enough so he would feel comfortable ordering in restaurants and reading the odd sign) before we left. He decided, in true nerd fashion, to practice his newfound skills by speaking only French on the trip–even to me.

On the RER ride from the airport, which was taking longer than he expected and jeopardizing an appointment in the city, he turned to me and blurted out the only French word he knew that could communicate his frustration: “Lentement!”

Lentement (my best attempt at a phonetic interpretation: lontmaw), you see, is the French word for slowly.

I fell out. (So, I assume, did most of the French people riding near us on the train. At least they had the decency to do it in their heads.)

Thankfully, the ride was not as “lentement” as it originally seemed (turns out, the map was somewhat misleading), and we arrived in the city right on time. For the rest of the trip, the word became our private joke. If we were stuck behind slow pedestrians or waiting to cross the street at an interminable traffic light, one of us would whisper it to the other. Line too long at a museum? Grounds for a “lentement.” And etc.

The tradition continued after we returned to Seattle (often, not surprisingly, when we were riding the 4). Over time, it has evolved to encompass anything that we consider to be figuratively slow, or, to put it more succinctly, uncool. Some examples: SUVs, public displays of bus luh, Flavor of Love (Moni, I’m looking at you), modeling a ball gown at an art walk…

Lentement can be used as almost any part of speech, but it is most commonly used as an adjective (“That is so lentement!”) or a noun (“What a lentement!”). You get the picture. (I hope.)

Why am I telling you this? Because, almost two years after the Paris trip, I still use the word all the time. At least once a week, I am tempted to use it in a post. And then I realize that no one, other than Bus Nerd, my brothers, and a few unlucky friends, knows what the heck it means. Now you do. That makes you a lentement, too.

…and chocolate for energy

Back when I was considering going car-free, I feared that becoming a bus chick would also cause me to become a homebody. I knew I could get to work and to my regular haunts on the bus, but what about a party in Renton on Saturday night, or a reading at an obscure bookshop in Ballard? I worried that I would decide events like these were not worth the trouble and give up the active life I had grown used to.

I am happy to report that, three years into this experiment, my life is as active as ever. This is largely thanks to:

1) Metro’s Trip Planner. All I have to know is where I am and where I’m going, and Trip Planner does the rest.
2) Flexcar. I rent a Flexcar only about once every other month, but when I use it, I need it. (Sometimes, you just can’t get there on the bus.) If I didn’t have the option of borrowing a car from time to time, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to try living without one.
3) A bus pal. My fiancé, Adam, is also car-free. Having a partner to wait with on those cold, late-night, and out-of-the-way excursions makes all the difference.
4) Bus ruts. I tend to ride the same routes over and over. After too many weeks of this, I get bored and look forward to any excuse to try a new number.

On Sunday, armed with my bus pal, a laptop, and an itch to get out of a longer-than-normal bus rut, I went from my home in the Central District to church (also in the Central District) to the University District to run an errand, then downtown to run another errand, and finally, to West Seattle to visit my family. That’s at least as much as an average person accomplishes on an average Sunday, but I got exercise and talked to strangers and felt the sun on my face, and I didn’t have to fight traffic or pay for parking.