CB iTunesLand

This morning I prepared for my usual work day commute by leaving the house at exactly 7:03 AM to walk the short block to the AC Transit CB bus stop. The walk takes less than one minute, and the bus normally pulls up at 7:06 AM. As I rounded the corner onto Modoc, I heard the bus approaching early. I rushed forward and then turned in time to see the CB bounding around the curve on the wrong side of the street! I flapped a "Hey don't forget me!" wave and stepped into the middle of the street to board the bus. "What the hell?" I wondered as I eyed the unfamiliar female driver. "Okay so she's new, and obviously she can't drive" I decided, then headed for a side-facing rear seat. LURCH. I sailed down the aisle and slammed into a seat in an undignified manner.

While the bus lurched and bounded down Florence Avenue and Broadway Terrace, I decided to distract myself by listening to the R&B tunes I had downloaded into my iPod over the week-end. I also quickly realized that, with all the jerky lurchy driving, I needed to sit in a braced position to keep me from banging my head against the window each time the driver stopped and started. By the time we reached Broadway Avenue though, I seriously doubted I would survive the trip into San Francisco.

I turned up the volume on my iPod as if that would soften the lurches. The other passengers were starting to look concerned and, although I couldn't hear what they were saying over my R&B grooves, I could tell that a few of them had started talking to each other. "Probably trying to deal with their nervousness" I thought. I mean this was a lousy driver. How can someone who drives this madly hold down a job as a bus driver??!

At the 40th Street bus stop, the driver apparently asked the two bicyclists on board to take their bikes off of the front-mounted bike rack and bring them inside the bus. "What the hell?" I wondered again. She was probably afraid her jerky driving would actually toss the bikes from the rack - I mean the stops and starts were just that violent. So here were these two passengers trying desperately to keep themselves braced for the ride and keep their bikes from taking off and seriously injuring other passengers. It was comical to watch, but I had Luther Vandross to keep me steady.

We all braced ourselves for the right turn off of Broadway onto West MacArthur. Suddenly the bus STOPPED hard in the middle of the turn and a BANG sounded from beneath the front end as if we had hit a very hard but small object in the street. My eyes searched quickly for the injured pedestrian but I saw none. LURCH. Ouch! I banged my head again. After a couple more blocks of this, one of the bicyclists pulled the Stop Request cord and apparently asked the driver to let her off. "Interesting" I thought, "I think I'll see what's going on." So I turned off the iPod.

The young, professionally dressed woman sitting to my left was nervously saying to no one in particular, "This is my first bus ride! What do we do? What's gonna happen next?" Huh?!

"May-day! May-day!" shouted the driver into her phone receiver as she frantically tried to contact the AC Transit dispatch office. Okay, not really, but the situation might well have been just that desperate for all my awareness. I mean, while I had been somewhat disengaged in iTunesLand, the bus had apparently lost it's power steering, and the lurches and hard stops had resulted from the driver's attempts to keep the bus inside the traffic lanes. Two blocks after the disgusted bicyclist got off, the driver finally gave up, pulled to the side of the street and we all waited for the rescue bus to arrive.

The moral of this tale? There is none. I just thought you'd find this slice of public transit commuter madness entertaining. By the way, I love my iPod and wouldn't want to commute on public transportation without it. However, a lip-reading course might be advisable.