The most interesting segment was when I was taking my family back from Culver City after seeing fireworks one Fourth of July. A prostitute took a cell call, and in a loud voice interviewed a new prospective client and then set up a meeting, clearly stating her address and apartment number within earshot of 40 or 50 people, many of whom understood at least a little English.

I endured the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute ride from the county line to downtown Miami a couple times. To keep the young folk from ripping up the seats, they provide sitting accomodations made of hard plastic. I had to abandon the practice due to a lack of meat on my own seat. I walked around as if crippled for a week after the last such trip. South Florida also has a commuter train called the Tri-Rail, as it serves three counties. My son and I found nowhere to purchase tickets one Sunday, and were socked with a $50 fine when the rent-a-cop went through the train verifying payment. Two weeks later, we won a vacation in the Orlando area from the agency that runs the line. The prize included two nights in a very nice suite hotel and eight admission tickets to our choice of the major theme parks. But getting the 220 miles to the theme park area was our problem, as was food, which was priced 60-100% above that available in town…25 miles away. I told my mother I wasn’t sure I could afford to win many more contests.

Still, when it works out, the bus is a wonderful way to get around. My biggest problem has always been that you can get just about anywhere in the early evening, but there’s no way to get home until the next morning in many cases.

One day they were riding and after a bit I noticed that there was no sound of the question-answer exchange. I started tuning in a bit and heard Maya start a question and then stop suddenly. I looked in the mirror and saw that her mother had a cookie broken up on her lap. Every time Maya started a sentence Mom would take a piece of cookie and pop it in her daughter’s mouth. I guess everybody needs a break once in awhile.

She swipes her bus pass and continues to touch the railings and handles on the bus and sits down. As she sits on the bus she begins to dig and her bag and pull out a granola bar. She unwraps this granola bar and pulls it out of the package with her bare hands. Let me remind you that she had just got done touching the “swine-infested” bus. She then lifts up her swine flu mask and ingests the swine-flu covered granola bar. Last time I checked the whole purpose of wearing a mask was to keep it on your face and help against the dreaded swine flu.

“Hi, are you going to thetford? or is the 727 just running late?”

“Yes, long stratton, ill check the prices”

“oh, no no no, THETford, im going to thetford”

“yes, stratford, thats £15.40″

i started to get a bit frustrated as he was not hearing me at all, as he started listing off every other ‘ford’ but thetford!

“no your not understanding me, thetford…look ill just wait for the 727″

Just as i thought he couldn’t get any stranger he started muttering to himself and came out with this quote

“ahhhh, shakespeares birthday! YOU DONT KNOW WHERE YOU ARE DO YOU!”

:/
i decided 727 or no 727…..i was not willing to put my life in the hands of schizophrenic 696!

With both vehicles and all of my bikes on a barge somewhere in the Pacific Ocean for the next several weeks, I was forced to be car-free after the move, and determined to make it work. I bought a bus pass and researched my options. I concluded (incorrectly, it turns out) that my best option would be to take the Route 42 bus from the corner of 46th Street and Bloomington Ave. to the light rail station and get downtown on the train (stupidly inefficient, I now know). On Sunday night, I studied my bus schedule one last time, I loaded my backpack with my pass, bus schedule and a magazine to read on the bus. I was so ready.

Like Christmas day, I woke up a little too early on Monday morning, not wanting to be late for my bus. Because she is a kind and caring person (and patient with me), my wife got up, too, and walked with me to the bus stop (in retrospect, this was a lot like Mom walking her kid down to the school bus stop on the first day of Kindergarten). 

Now, my spouse is not a “morning person”. She was kind of groggy and not all that pleased to be out and about at 6:45 AM, but she is a sweet and good-natured bear and took the whole event in stride despite the hour.  Our walk led us to the corner of 46th Street and Bloomington Ave., where we commenced to wait.

As we stood on the corner, she decided that a cup of coffee sounded pretty good, so she told me that she was going to go across the street to a local coffee shop, and asked if I wanted anything. 

“Yes. An espresso. Get me an espresso. Get me an espresso because I don’t have much time – my bus is coming!” I told her.
She looked at me for a long moment, nodded once, then set off across the street and disappeared into the coffee shop.

Alone on the corner at dawn, I evaluated my state of preparedness. 

• Magazine: check! 
• Bus pass: check! 
• Bus schedule: check! 
• Cell phone: check! 

I was so ready.

Within a minute, a bus pulled up to the stop. I quickly looked at the coffee shop – no sign of my wife!! I knew she would know that if I was not at the intersection when she returned with my espresso that I had boarded my bus and was bound for work, so I got on swiped my bus pass and turned to sit, noticing immediately that I was the only passenger on the bus. As we pulled away, I looked back at the coffee shop as we pulled away.

Instead of continuing down 46th Street towards the light rail station (the Route 46 M.O.), the bus driver gave the wheel a mighty yank as he pulled away from the stop and turned south on Bloomington Ave.

WHAT THE HELL! Damn! Damn! Damn! Where are we going? Am I being kidnapped? Why would anyone kidnap me? Where are we going? Maybe I am hostage! Why would the bus driver kidnap me? What am I going to do?

Calmly, I asked the driver, ”Ah – Where are we going?”

“Downtown!”, he said, not looking at me as we crossed Minnehaha Parkway.

Hmm…. Downtown – that was good, Minneapolis is small enough that I could walk just about anywhere if I had to. But wait – these are the TWIN cities! It’s a long damn walk from St. Paul…

“Um… which downtown?” I asked.

“(long pause) Minneapolis… do you want to get off?” He was now looking at me in the mirror.

Another long pause on my part. “No – I am going to go for it” I said.

The driver eyed me in the mirror again and kept going south on Bloomington and then west on 54th Street. The bus did a lap around South MPLS and added people as we snaked up Chicago Ave., then headed onto I-35W at 35th Street. From there we expressed it downtown.  I had lucked into an express bus that had totally escaped my radar during my research.

Sweet!

The bus stopped a few blocks from my office and I got up to leave.  As I did so, I noticed that the driver was eyeing me in the mirror again. As I got off, the driver looked at me. I told him “this worked out very well for me, thanks.” 

It was perhaps the best ride I’ve ever taken on any transit system. And I’ve taken many rides in Boston, New York, Philly, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Melbourne, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Prague, Paris, Madrid, Bilbao, &c.

We turned on to Lake Street and a passenger was trying to get the attention of a friend on the sidewalk. The driver opened the door and started yelling the same name, confusing the heck out of the person being summoned.

We turned on to Lake Street. The driver seemed to know some of the patrons, and was quite a conversationalist, in English and Spanish, to boot. No one was immune, but the humour was witty and in good taste, and everyone enjoyed it.

Traffic was terrible, and after Chicago he got on to 31st to bypass a bottleneck. “See him up there?” he said, referring to the 21 a few blocks ahead of us? When we turned back on to Lake Street at Hiawatha, we had passed him. He got on the PA: “Did you see what we just did? And no one gives me a thank you!” We all thanked him in unison.

He didn’t care for traffic trying to cut off the bus, either, rolling down his window to give them his thoughts a few times. But, we finally had made it through the gridlock and were on to the open part of the route, albeit 15 minutes late.

He would not be deterred from making up time. If a light was green and a stop unoccupied, he’d go through the light to drop a departing passenger on the far corner to avoid the light. This maneuver was successful several times. I can’t even remember why, but he had us in stitches across Marshall in Saint Paul. When I alighted at Snelling, I had actually thought of staying on to see what other gems he had for us. But it was drying out, and I was glad to be home. It was the most enjoyable ride in a long time.

The daughter said, “I’d like to have my wedding on a plantation some day.”

The mother replied, “Oh, the south is so great. Such amazing history.”

The daughter responded, “I love plantation culture.”

I thought maybe they could both use copies of “Beloved.”

The bus experience has been good. It requires a little more planning around departure times, but I am enjoying being able to read, or just zone out, on the bus. You can’t do that driving (or at least you are not supposed to). I also like that it controls how late I work. I tend to get into something at the office and will stay later than I would like. Finally, I admit to feeling a little righteous about it as well.

I also find Minneapolis bus society to be interesting. I already have a “Bus Friend” that sits with me in the morning. I get on at one of the very first stops on the limited stop route, so I can grab a seat no problem.

Once all of the entirely empty seats are taken, the dynamic changes; people getting on the bus have only about 3 seconds or so size up everyone on the bus and decide who they are going to sit with. My Bus Friend gets on at this point in the route. Generally, she will glance around the bus and nonchalantly come over and sit with me, probably because I look like I bathe and probably won’t be too creepy.

I like my Bus Friend although I have no idea who she is, where she is going, what her name is or what she does. It’s a surprising rich non-relationship. Here are the general rules as I have come to understand them for building and maintaining a healthy Bus Friendship:

-Don’t really acknowledge them – this is a secret friendship. You can nod at them, but much more than that starts to get a little creepy.

-Try not to look at what they are reading, that starts to get a little creepy, too.

-Act like you could care less if they sit with you or not. Being eager to sit with you Bus Friend is a little creepy.

-Watch out for your bus friend; if their mittens fall on the disgusting floor let them know; don’t help them too much or it’s a little too creepy, though.

-Do not breathe through you mouth when sitting with your Bus Friend.

-Always sit in the same location if you want to keep your Bus Friend; moving from your usual spot says to your Bus Friend “Fuck you – I moved so you won’t be able to find me!”. Nobody needs that kind of rejection at 7:00 AM.

-If your Bus Friend does not show up one day, but is there the next day, it is permissible to raise your eye brows in acknowledgement when you see each other. Anything more gets a little creepy.

Essentially, I have concluded that to be good Bus Friends, you both need to make a (silent and mysterious) commitment to each to be friendly within a narrow spectrum, and avoid being weird or creepy. Bus Friends provide a valuable service to each other – it’s a little familiarity and also some insurance that weird or creepy people won’t come over and sit with you.

I find maintaining these carefully orchestrated non-relationship to be one of the more interesting aspects of my bus ride. Although, I have to admit that the fact that I have thought so much about Bus Friends is, in itself, probably a little creepy.