Riding the bus

This morning, as every weekday morning for the past several weeks, I rode the bus to school. This afternoon, as most afternoons, I will ride the bus from school to home. I could say that I have a "love/hate relationship" with riding the bus, but that would leave shades of meaning unturned, all in the cause of using a pithy and already heavily burdened phrase. The truth is, usually I like riding the bus, occassionally I hate riding the bus, and sometimes I have no real opinion about it.

I don't like it when the bus is very crowded, or when it's running very late, but this is happening less and less now. This morning I had a wonderful bus experience. There were seats left when I got on, but no pair of seats totally unoccupied. Rather than impose my considerable volume on another passenger, I chose to stand. For the entire bus-ride, I was the only one standing, and I had a blast. It was like surfing (I imagine), or at least like a very fun ride on which you are allowed to stand up. With the bus's current detour route, we make quite a trip around twists and turns, and over a lot of bumps. With no one else standing up, I could hold onto any or as many bars as I wanted, and it was great.

When it came to my stop, another guy and I both tried waving our hands in front of the door sensor at the same time, and we had a little gentle hand-slapping episode. It occurred to me that it's very good that the instructions for the door say "wave your hand", and not "karate-chop your hand". That would have been a very different situation.

The other thing I like about the bus is that, outside of school, it is the place where I find the most general social interaction. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I meet people, but I definitely experience other people, to a small extent. It's not always pleasant, but it's almost always a little interesting. The most interesting thing is how darn quiet everyone is at the bus stop. I think I've talked to people twice so far.

I've only taken the bus sporadically in the past. This is the first time where I'm forced to take it daily. The last time I had to take a bus-like contrivance on a daily basis was in junior high school, and I stopped that pretty soon because of my tendency to be tripped by other riders who were somewhat evil and very much stupid. One of the people who tripped me was working in the Stewart's convenience store near my home a couple of years after we graduated. I only saw him there once, and he tried to have a little friendly conversation and reminisce, as if we were great friends in school. What a bastard.

So far the bus here is much better. No one's tripped me yet, and I've only stumbled on my own once or twice, which is about how often I stumble when not on the bus anyway.