A brand spanking new plan

Okay, so this week sucked, bus-wise. Let’s be honest. It was nearly an hour late on Monday night, and about 25 minutes late on Tuesday morning. I don’t need this shit. It takes me 20-25 minutes tops to drive in my car, and over an hour to take the bus. 

So.

We’ve reached an impasse.

But I’m not giving up entirely yet. I’m going to recalibrate my route. On Tuesday, I’m gonna take Big Blue the whole way there and back, using ONLY Olympic Blvd. None of this Wilshire to Westwood, Westwood to Olympic crap.

And then we’ll take it from there.

If this fails me, we may have to break up.

Do you understand what I’m saying, bus?

Quick book report: “The House on Fortune Street” and “The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox”

I read two books last weekend on the airplane (see previous entries).

Both were very well-written (by Margot Livesey and Maggie O’Farrell, respectively); both featured affairs with married men that (SPOILER ALERT) were later felled when the mistress saw the married man’s family in public, with wifey clearly pregnant. Odd that both books I chose used the same plot twist.

Both were also frigging depressing. I really need to find a light humor book, for realz.

Bus, we need to talk

So after Sunday’s night nasty bus experience, I was a bit disturbed but determined to continue using the bus to commute.

The morning bus crowd is much cleaner, quieter, nicer, and I had a newspaper to read so I was all set yesterday morning.

The ride back, however…

I caught the Culver 6 on time, and got to Westwood very early, like 7:15.

I went to wait for my transfer bus.

And wait.

And wait.

It didn’t get there until 8:04, people.

IT’S SUPPOSED TO COME APPROX. EVERY 12 MINUTES.

Where the hell was it? Why did three full cycles pass us by?!

And it’s not like I was distracted by reading and didn’t see it; the same people waited with me nearly the whole time. None of us could figure out what was going on. Also, I didn’t have a jacket, and I was cold and angry.

SO THEN.

I get dropped off at my stop, and realize I don’t have my keys.

My husband is not home, and I have nowhere to go. I am, effectively, momentarily, homeless.

I started to feel really bad about the homeless people I’d seen on the bus the other night. How miserable and lonely they must be. I know my situation doesn’t even remotely compare and it’s laughable to even juxtapose them, but I’m noting it here because my empathy level increased slightly from the previous day. How do they stretch out the time? What do they do all day? Nowhere to go, and no way of getting there. I wonder if some of them take the bus back and forth just to have something to do, and someplace inside?

So I managed to get inside my building, which was nice and warm, but not inside my actual room, so I ventured out again, unsure if my husband would be back at midnight or 1 am (it was 8:40 pm by this point; when driving I get home at 7:30, so I was pretty irritated all around; plus if I’d driven I would have remembered my keys, obvs).

I ended up walking to an Indian restaurant and lingering there for a long time over a big meal (which, obviously, is not something a real homeless person can do). Then I went to Ralph’s and read magazines. DAMN that store is cold. If I’d stayed in better touch with some of my apartment-mates, I could have stayed with them; or if I remembered which building M & R lived in, I could have stayed with them. Serves me right for being a loner, I guess.

A few hours later, Hubby gets home, sees the place is dark and untouched, finds my voice mails and calls me and I go home and go to sleep right away.

Bus, you are making me not like you

So I did it. I did the impossible. I got my husband to agree to use the local Metro plus the Flyaway to get to the airport last weekend.

For this feat, we needed nerves of steel. Or just a willingness to go with absolutely no sleep; we went to bed at 11:30 pm, to wake up at 3:30 am, trundle outside at 4 with our luggage, and wait in the almost pitch-dark for the 20. I had been told by what I assumed was a reliable source that, after 9 pm, the fare decreases to 75 cents, but this was not true! Or at least not true on weekdays, so when I go, all confidently, “75 cents, right?” (hoping to show off for the the hubby) the driver goes, “no, 1.25.” Suckaz.

There was precisely one other white person on the bus with us at that hour, with headphones on, looking exhausted. Where were all these people going at 4 am on a Friday morning??!

So we get to Westwood in RECORD TIME (almost non-stop, and NO CARS ON THE ROAD — my fastest trek ever ever, never to be repeated probably) and walk over to the Flyaway stop on Kinross. There are mad amounts of cop cars cruising UCLA this time of night, so rest easy, Parents of Students.

I’m giddy, prone to bursts of insane, exhausted laughter but hubby is not amused. As promised, the Flyaway arrives at 5 pm on the dot and costs 4 bucks each. The air conditioning is FRIGID. There are mostly UCLA students with us, chattin’ away. It’s a non-stop straight shot to LAX, with drop-offs right at your terminal. It was easy breezy.

Sure, it took a little extra preparation and time on our part, but the early hour, lack of rival traffic, etc made it a relatively painless, quick, CHEAP journey.

Not so for the ride back.

And as a result, I’m fairly confident we will never do this again.

First, the Flyaway takes FOREVER to get through the airport, since it has to stop and pick people up CONSTANTLY, amongst all the the shuttles, buses, rental car vehicles. That took a good hour from the time we waited for it to show. The 405 etc wasn’t bad, but still. AND THEN, the West 20, which I’d assured my husband would be empty because the Westwood/Wilshire stop is the first pick-up on the route, made a TOTAL LIAR out of me; not only was it half-full, there was a fucked up, crazy-ass, disgusting, dirty, insane homeless woman immediately next to me.

Let me try to describe her.

Keep in mind it’s tough to describe someone that you never looked at directly; I was repulsed when I noticed that she was in skin tight, unwashed pajamas, and kept fidgeting her hands inside the tips of her shirt sleeves, shuffling them back and forth in agitation. But keeping them in her shirtsleeves was better than the alternative, which was to show her fingers, each of which sported TWO-INCH LONG, DIRTY ASS FINGERNAILS.

These claws will haunt my dreams for years.

They were inhuman. They came so close to touching me. Each time the bus lurched (which was often), my husband dug his fingers into my arm to keep me from sliding into the homeless woman, who periodically looked over she was gonna start some shit.

And she screamed in my ear at one of the stops; I don’t know why or what she said. The ride was a nightmare, with thugs and homeless and creepy parents with passed out children (wtf were they doing at midnight on a Sunday, passed out on a bus? I swear they looked drugged or trafficked). The stench was awful. It was by far my worst experience on the bus, and it breaks my heart that my husband had to see it that way. Now he doesn’t understand why I would ever elect to ride the bus, and I know he’ll never want to take it to the airport again, even though all told we saved at least 80 bucks.

Bad updater; no biscuit!!

I’ve been a bad updater lately, though in my defense there’s not much to report; due to various errands and dentist appointments last week I only ended up taking the bus twice. Still, it’s worth mentioning the hell that is the commuter 720 bus, which I took to Brentwood the other weekend. Literally a wall of people rushes the bus and crams inside; the bus driver then announces he is closing the doors, so you either brace yourself, take a deep breath and squeeze in at the last second or get the door shut in your face. You’ve gotta stand the whole way, getting thrown about, and I have found I much prefer the local buses, even though they stop every other block. Much more comfortable to sit, read, and forget the world for awhile.

I know the Metro Rapid’s appeal is that it doesn’t make very many stops, but for my purposes it doesn’t stop where I need it to anyway, and the crowd is rather depressing. I won’t be taking it again if I can help it.

I’m trying to decide if there’s a better route for me to use to work; possibly Olympic the whole way, with a longer walk at the beginning and end? I do like the Westwood transfer though; there’s a lot I can get done on the way.

And you are…? My first tranny sightings

On Friday I had not one but two tranny sightings: one on the ride going to work and one on the ride coming back. The latter was an obese, possibly homeless, blanket-clad man with orange hair and a large cherry tattoo ON HIS FACE. He liked to comment on the goings-on (some of them only in his head). He was convinced that the Metro Rapid had been involved in either an accident or a medical trauma at Fairfax and Wilshire, and wouldn’t let up until the bus driver and another homeless person he seemed to know agreed with him. I do think there might have been a firetruck up there so maybe he was on to something.

Also, they were playing the radio on my commute home; mostly ’80s cheese like Taylor Dane (?), which I did not like. I don’t object to the genre, but it was difficult to concentrate on my reading. I can generally block out the stop announcements and Transit TV, but the radio is difficult to ignore and I don’t want to have to deal with it.

This weekend I’m set to try, for the first time, the Dash up to Fairfax combined with the 720 Rapid to get to Brentwood for brunch. Then it’s off to the library where I have three books waiting for me.

Gender segregation on the bus

When I board the bus, the first thing I do after paying and getting my transfer slip is scan the seats. The first group are single seats that ride sideways. These are less comfortable, because your body moves with the bus, and you end up swaying sideways with each lurch.

The second group are two-by-two aisle seats facing forward. If there’s an empty block of two, I grab the one by the window to make room for someone else, but if the bus is basically empty I’ll grab the one by the aisle and put my bag in the other seat.

If it’s crowded, I sit next to a woman (many of whom are reading, and never even glance up).

I NEVER sit next to a man. It sounds absurd and old-fashioned, but it could be misconstrued as interest, particularly if there are other free seats. All the women I’ve seen follow this rule as well; women will sit next to me before they’ll consider sitting next to a dude. And frankly I don’t like it if dude sits next to me, unless there are literally no other seats available. Even then it’s not ideal.

What have I learned? Bus vs. Car

Yesterday I had an event in Hollywood right after work that required a change of clothes (could I be any more of a tom boy?) so I drove my car to and from. After taking the bus nearly every day for three weeks, it felt pretty strange.

Pros:

1. I left 25 minutes before I had to be there, instead of an hour
2. Got to listen to my cheesy hip hop mix CD
3. No unwanted strangers nodding off onto my shoulder
4. No neck and back jostling from constant potholes (there were certainly potholes, but my car is  more insulating than the bus)

Cons:

1. Car didn’t start right away, which is increasingly common and stressful
2. Since my car accident, changing lanes still makes me nervous, so I had to constantly think about what I was doing and couldn’t just “be”
3. Had to drive around to find parking
4. Couldn’t read my latest book, “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher”
5. No time spent outside, walking

THE WINNER: BUS by a margin!

Do not mess with our A/C, man

Today on the bus there was a guy dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and several layers who demanded that the bus driver turn off the air conditioning. It was BOILING OUTSIDE. The A/C is one of the unexpected perks of the bus. What was his problem??!!

“Turn it off!” he yelled at random, then muttered under his breath that it was too loud and he needed headphones (?). Eventually he walked to the front of the bus and confronted the driver directly; I couldn’t hear the driver’s response, but the air remained on. AS WELL IT SHOULD.

Quick How-Tos

So you live in L.A. and you’re thinking of riding the bus. What are the three most important things to know?

1. Have exact change. The machine takes coins and dollars, but it doesn’t give back if you over pay.

2. If you need to transfer to another bus as part of your trip, ask for a transfer slip from the first bus driver as you pay. He or she will tear one off for you (it’s about the size of a bookmark). Hand it over to the second bus driver when you board.

3. Exit from the back. When your stop is announced and you’ve pulled the cord above the windows and you’re ready to leave, do everyone a favor and exit from the rear doors (you have to push them open like saloon doors). This helps keep things moving, because the people getting on the bus obviously have to use the front door so they can pay.

All sounds easy and logical, right? Trust me, if you follow those rules, you’ll be doing better than most.