TAKE A LOOK AT MY BLOGGER
IT’S THE ONLY ONE I GOT
(It’s not much of a blogger,
But I don’t seem to write a lot.)
You know, I enjoy touting public transit as a viable alternative to driving. The buses (at least here) run very much on time, someone else gets to worry about other drivers, you don’t have to pay for any vehicle repairs, and the worst thing about adverse weather is that your bus might be late.
On the other hand…taking your car to work also means you don’t have the unique experience of witnessing an escapee from the local hospital’s mental ward hitch a ride on your bus and have to be gently escorted back off by at least 2 police officers.
No, really. That’s why I was almost late for work a few mornings ago.
To their credit, the officers were very courteous and cautious, and while said patient was very large and thoroughly incoherent, at least he wasn’t violent and aggressive. Most of his 15 minute stay on the bus he spent moaning or shouting loudly at what I think might have been birds he saw outside the windows.
Not surprisingly, his unexpected decision to take a bus somewhere…anywhere…delayed us considerably. I’m still impressed this guy managed to not only get past his section’s security, but also make it outside the hospital and end up two blocks down the road (wherein he decided to hitch a ride on the bus). Having a keen presence of mind, our driver accepted him onto the bus despite a lack of transit pass and, once we reached the hospital, kept the bus at that stop while the police arrived to help keep him calm, and hospital security went to doublecheck that yes, he was in fact missing from their facility.
Over half of the people on our bus got rather impatient, jumped ship and grabbed the next bus the second it showed up--some of them grumbling rather loudly about the inconvenience of being delayed for this. I smiled and watched them go…knowing perfectly well that the bus they were defecting to didn’t even remotely have the same final destination as our current bus.
Guess who I saw get back on the bus about 15 minutes later as we pulled up to the last mutual stop before our route and that other bus’s route diverged?
And was it cruel of me to wave slightly at them as they shuffled past me in a disgruntled fashion?
Heck of a way to start back after the Con, that’s all I can say. But now I must go to prepare for (gyarg...) another day of weekend work; a Con diary shall appear tomorrow, I promise.
Labels: public transit junction what's your disfunction
posted by Phillip at 4:51 AM
