Riding the bus - the good, the BAD

[PSUFAN]

OK - I ride the bus to and from work each day here in Pittsburgh.

The Good - lots and LOTS of beautiful young ladies ride the bus, doing their part to reduce global warming, etc. The spank bank gets innumerable deposits daily - that thing is so in the black that it tried to attend the Million Man March.

The Port Authority of Allegheny County has been going through some financial woe..so they've been forced to cut services. Less routes, remaining routes less frequently traversed. So basically, each bus ride is packed tighter than a) TTB's registration info in the proverbial tree-flattened glove compartment, or b) AP's marbled cetacean ass cheeks into some frilly little number.

Many many times, this situation results in me pressed up against a freshly showered and primped hot young lady, either standing in the aisle or in a bench seat. There are worse way to spend the commute, as little as Kid Gnashville would believe it.

SOMETIMES, though...you get a different result alfuckingtogether. Like this morning...the ride started out with me grabbing a double bench seat and opening my book, waiting patiently for the seat next to me to sag very slightly, for the air to fill tastefully with some sensibly applied floral or fruity aroma, and for the telltale faint sound of female pleasure at being seated next to someone not wholly unattractive for the duration of the ride.

But it went horribly wrong this morning. I felt none of that; instead I felt a unnervingly large but soft pressure on my side that increased dramatically and fearfully. It was some fat fucking asshole dude. He slowly sat, and in so doing created a disgustingly air-tight seal between my side and his jelly saddlebags. As he settled in, he tried to adjust so that less pressure was applied to my frame...but I was thus even more exceeded above and below by persistent shims of soft, shaking, putridly warm pigflesh absurdly constrained in polyester.

I was nowhere near the skeletal structure of this creature. He was probably 350 or so...a human buffeted with a disgustingly generous living sack of fluid material. I could have used a whaling knife to carve out long sheets of blubber to fling onto the aisle.

Tears of rage welled in my eyes. Instead of a pleasant morning experience, I was sealed into a seat by a human fleshplug - a sheer living hellride. Forget about moving, this pile was surrounded by other folks that couldn't go anywhere. I was fucking planted.

I tried to be philosophical...hell, at least if the bus crashed, I'd have my own personal blubber bag, but it would probably burst and coat me with goop and the EMS responders would take my picture for news of the weird before high-pressure hosing me off. Worse yet, as I fitfully threw my head around, I saw that there were 5-6 girls who just didn't beat this behemoth to the seat, as much as they were trying, god love 'em. They were so close, but SO far out of reach.

Fuck you, godless Libs...the ozone layer's not worth this sort of torture. Next time this happens, I'm whipping out a machete, dicing up the blubber bag, and getting off the bus and going back to my car IMMEDIATELY. And if it happens again on the way home, I'll smash my pitiful noggin against the glass until I either expire or break through to heave myself out onto the careening blacktop.

[Cuda]

dennard is DEAD, YOU ASS!

[PSUFAN]

heh heh, that he is...

[PSUFAN]

Do buses even exist in CA?

[Dinsdale]

Do buses even exist in CA?

Bay Area has mad public transit.

DO NOT get all wasted, get off at the wrong station, and get lost in Richmond while riding it, though -- especially if you're white.



Or so I've heard.

[.m2]

Do buses even exist in CA?

I laughed.


Sin,

every street corner in San Francisco.... every 3 to 6 minutes.

[Diogenes]

Do buses even exist in CA?

Yes, and they suck ass. As does the trolley.

But if you commute between SD and North San Diego County, the Coaster is pretty nice.

[Dinsdale]

^^^^ Fucking clairvoyant

[Uncle Fester]

I've never liked the fooken bus. When I was a kid, I walked to school rather take a bus, a trend that has continued until this past year, when I began commuting downtown for a job.

The BAD:
The heat. Why does the temperature inside the average bus always hover around 95 degrees, summer or winter? It's like wearing a parka inside a sleeping bag on a hot day in a nursing home. I crack the windows wide open and sit happily in the resulting tornado as women's hairdos fly apart, papers whirl about and stick to old lady's faces, witches fly past on broomsticks, etc.

Schedules:
The damn buses routinely come five minutes early, 15 minutes late, down the wrong street going the wrong way to the wrong stop.

Maniac Drivers:
Here in the Twin Cities, a lot of the drivers are Somali, which in and of itself is not bad, but they drive like crazy people, alternately mashing the brake pedal and gas to the floor. After you ring for your stop, trying to walk the twenty feet to the door is like being drunk on a skateboard inside a funhouse during an earthquake. I think the drivers take it as a personal challenge to get you down, to bounce you off an old lady and onto a fat guy's lap.

Fat Guys/Gals:
Unlike PSU, my thoughts tend less toward fillet knives and blubber sacks and more toward either protecting my seat or getting off the damn bus and out into the fresh air. I stash my backpack on the empty space next to me and move it only if the bus is full. Even then, I'm happy to let the fatties stand, working a little blood into their giant hamhock-like legs, the support railings bending under the strain of their pudgy fingers.

The Loud, Smelly, Crazy Guy:
Don't try looking away. Forget about pretending to be distracted by your book or I-Pod. He sees you, he's coming your way, and he's going to sit next to you and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

The Beautiful, Detached, and Freaked-Out Hottie:
She's spent every ride of her entire commuter life being stared at, leered over, or hit on by every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas . She doesn't want to talk. She doesn't want to have sex with you. She wants to go to her job, do her eight hours, and return home in time to watch "Gray's Anatomy." So forget it already. Yeah, she's sitting next to you and her leg is brushing up against yours, but it means nothing. Sorry.

The GOOD:
You don't have to drive.
You get a chance to read.
That's about it.