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I've been meaning to post this for several weeks. This is my (and anyone else's) bus adventure thread. (oh, and Skyway stories are ok, too 
)
Unlike Gravekeeper, I don't really have any SCs to talk about, so I can't just sandwich my bus stories in with regular posts.
For some background, I have to take two separate buses to and from work, and I take a different set of buses in the afternoon than I take in the morning.
So, on with the bus adventures!
Push the Button, Max
So, one morning I get off the first bus and mosey on over to the corner so I can cross the street to get to the stop for my second bus. There's a girl, maybe 14, already standing at the corner and I think to myself that she must have pushed the button already. She couldn't be so stupid as to not have pushed the button. Right?
So, the light changes and lo, the crosswalk does not turn green. The girl stands there like the idiot she is, because obviously you can't cross until the little crosswalk man is green, right? Since I already have no faith in people having brains, I was ready, and reached past her to punch the button.
Since this particular signal was programmed by people with brains and it's only been a couple of seconds, the crosswalk changes over, and all is right with the world. I pity today's youth.
Wattle Man
I get on the bus one morning, and there's this guy up in the front who is filthy, foul-looking, and muttering to himself. I have dubbed him Wattle Man due to the fact that he has a notable wattle. It's obvious that in the not too distant past, he was much heavier than he is now.
I go sit down and all is well. I can hear, from my position near the back door of the bus, that this guy is muttering profanities to himself in a near-constant stream. Whatever it is that the bus driver is doing, WM doesn't like it.
About three stops later, we have a wheelchair. That doesn't sit well with WM. Not well at all. WM decides that he needs to move further back into the bus to avoid the dreaded wheelchair rider. WM chooses to sit directly behind me. Aren't I lucky.
That's when I discover that WM not only looks foul, but he smells as good as he looks. Joy. And he's still muttering a fairly steady stream of bitching and profanities.
I gave him my death glare as I left the bus.
I've seen him a few other times, as well. He is always muttering profanity-laced complaints, no matter the ocaision. Only now in addition to an extreme state of unwashedness, he also sports a very grubby and dirt-encrusted plastic hospital wristband.
The Woman with No Nose
I have no idea of the circumstances, but the same day I first encountered WM, I also ran into the woman who has no nose.
The first time I saw her she looked pretty upbeat. Mostly toothless, and with a big bandage over the part of her face where her nose would be, but otherwise fairly happy.
Of the several other times I have seen her during my morning treks into work, she has looked decidedly less happy. I get the distinct inpression that she has done a lot of really hard drinking and a lot of really hard drugs. I don't know for sure, but that's surely the impression I get.
Dealer McDope
Today, I think I must have seen the most pathetically obvious dope dealer in the world, ever.
I had thought the guy who dropped his pants at the end of the Iron Maiden Somewhere in Time concert in a tribute to Bruce Dickinson, right in front of the cops was about as clueless as you get, but at least he wasn't carrying a couple hundred dollars worth of dope in a large ziploc at the local train/bus depot.
So, I'm sitting on one of the benches along the 5 bays for buses at the depot which is also a rail station. It gets a lot of traffic. My first bus was nice and late, so now I get to wait half an hour for my next second bus.
I glance over to the right as a bus lets out and watch this guy plop down on another bench. A few minutes later, another guy strolls on over, and they get to talking. The first guy has pulled out this large bag full of green leafy stuff. I'm two benches away, and I can see immediately what he's doing.
He proceeds to roll up the bag, after pulling out his customer's purchase, and then stuffs it in his sock. Yeah, like that isn't about as obvious as you get. I mocked him to the lady sitting next to me. She also found his idiocy vaguely amusing.
Then, they proceeded to sit there, smoking joints, while waiting for their bus. Considering that they didn't stub them out until after the bus had stopped and was actually waiting on them to get on, I know they must have smelled quite strongly of pot to everyone on the bus.
If you're going to be dealing a controlled substance in quantities high enough to be a felony, don't you think you'd keep a slightly lower profile?
Super Skank
I am again waiting on my connecting bus at the station. This time my first bus was only slightly late. My second bus, which was still at the station when we pulled in, decided that leaving the station during the time that anyone on the late bus would be halfway to the waiting bus was an excellent idea. Ass.
So, I sit down on one of the benches. As I'm waiting, I see this woman walking towards me and I think to myself that the dress she's wearing would look really nice if the top wasn't so loose on her.
She sits next to me. It is at that point that I can tell that the reason the dress doesn't fit right in the front is because it's half zipped down in the back. At this point, I'm thinking that perhaps she's a little ditzy.
Boy was I wrong.
While she's sitting there, on the bench next to me, in a busy train station during afternoon rush, she proceeds to reach down between her legs to wipe at her crotch with a bit of paper towel!
And if that's not nasty enough, she the proceeds to sniff at it!
Oh, yeah. I quite plainly and deliberately moved to the end of the bench.
She sat there, wiping and sniffing, for about five minutes. Then she got up and went partway behind some of the trees (probably for the shade) and continued to do whatever the hell it was she was doing.
At this point, I'm wondering how much a skanky ho charges for a go at the bus station....
The Man Who Would Not Shut Up
I am on my second, longer bus, heading in to work. I sit in my usual spot, right across from the back doors. There is a man up at the front in the very first seat right behind the front door talking to the woman two seats away from him.
I can hear him quite plainly from halfway down the bus, although I don't have the fainted idea what the hell he was saying, as he talked as if his mouth were full of marshmallows.
It's fairly obvious that the woman next to him wants him to shut the fuck up and go away. We hit another stop and he spots fresh meat getting on. One 20-something woman sits across from him, so he starts acosting her.
He's loud, he's obviously opinionated, and at this point, I can tell that he's spouting some egotistical religious crap.
My stop is coming up, so I punch the call button and stand up. At this point I make some comment about him not shutting up and I strongly believe that the man who was sitting in front of me laughed about it because the man who wouldn't shut up turned and started to give him a load of grief.
I don't know for certain why, because he still sounded like he liked to smuggle cottonballs in his cheeks. But I do know that I pissed him off when I made a parting shot as I left the bus.
I do feel somewhat sorry for the people who were still stuck with him, however.
Denied, Part i
I'm on the bus, waiting for the layover at the station to be over so we can get moving. A guy gets on the bus and tries to use a Metro Rail day pass to ride. This bus is not part of the Metro system, and so that day pass is useless.
The guy whines a bit, but gives up and pays the whopping $0.90 it costs to ride the bus. (the bus company must make a ton of money they don't have to claim because people just shove a dollar into the slot, rather than feed in 90 cents in coins)
Denied, Part ii
Another guy steps onto the bus and says, "I'm going to need a transfer, right?"
The bus driver appears to have been dealing with idiots all shift, because he's decidedly not amused. He lets the guy know that, "Yes, you're going to need a transfer."
The guy then asks how long the layover is. The bus driver tells him three minutes. The guy, full of hope, asks if it's ten minutes. The bus driver crushes his hope and repeats that it's only three minutes.
The guy runs off, ostensibly to get the transfer he should have had in the first place.
Denied, Part iii
Another guy (they're all guys that day) steps up onto the bus and flashes a monthly pass. I had used a token myself, because it was the beginning of the month, and I had neglected to replace my monthly pass yet.
Obviously, this guy had also neglected to replace his pass, or was otherwise unaware that it was now August, and the bus driver gave him a no go on the expired pass.
The guy whines and wheedles for a few minutes, but finally gives up in the face of the bus driver's lack of caring, and pulls out a dollar to feed into the machine.
Denied, Epilogue
So, we finally leave, about five minutes after Part ii guy took off.
The guy from Part ii never reappeared, so he either found alternate arrangements, or he was waiting the 30 minutes for the next bus.
The Man Who Would Not Shut Up, Wheelchair Edition
I'm at the stop waiting for my second bus one morning, and this guy in a wheelchair rolls up.
He singles out this young woman who is holding a few books and appears to be headed to the college that happens to be either the same stop or one stop past my stop for work.
He starts talking to her. The first thing I notice is that he's loud. Sporting event at the stadium, loud. Loud out of all proportion to what is required on the sidewalk at a bus stop at 7:30 in the morning.
The second thing I notice is that he's talking about consiracy theories and how the government and big business are all evil and out to get us and blah, blah, blah. I'm surprised this guy wasn't sporting a tinfoil hat!
Both the school woman and I were rescued from his ranting when the bus pulled up. There were already two people in wheelchairs on, and there are only two stations for people in wheelchairs, so Mr Conspiracy Theory had to wait for the next bus to get a ride.
The silence was golden.
They're Your Brats, So Stop Ignoring Them
I've had the misfortune to share the bus with this crew two different times, now, and to say I am not impressed is an understatement.
The group consists of two women, one of which is small-ish, neatly dressed, and obviously coming home from work. The other woman is grossly obese, wears clothes that don't really fit, and doesn't appear to be particularly responsible.
Between them, they have four toddlers with them. The smaller woman has one that is less than a year old, and another that's possibly three. Aside from the fact that the older one likes to scream, they're not so bad.
The larger woman is in charge of two tykes who I would guess to be about two and four. They are both hyperactive and very, very noisy. LW keeps a small collection of junk food (like Cheetoes and wafer cookies) on hand to try to bribe her pair of charges to behave. Otherwise, she does absolutely nothing to keep them from annoying everybody else on the bus.
Nothing.
The last time I was on with them, I watched as the older of her pair dropped his wafer on the seat, picked it up, then dropped it on the floor. I know that she looked at it on the floor and just left it there. Meanwhile, both of her charges are grinding wafer dust and Cheetos into the seats as they squirm around.
Oh, and they like to take up one entire side of the front of the bus. You know, the place where you're supposed to keep space for the elderly and handicapped.
I watched as a very ghetto-looking 20-something gave up his seat for an older lady. I, personally, gave up my seat so another older woman could have it. (she was quite happy to not have to walk further back into the bus. I was happy to not have to be so close to the terrors at the front of the bus. win-win) Then, the guy with the cane and obvious foot prosthetic limped onto the bus. The terror squad ignored him and forced him to hobble past the seats that should have been available to the next available one, which was right in front of my new spot, near the back doors of the bus.
I'm not so upset at the smaller woman, but the other one I loathe.
.....
That's all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to chime in with your own fun tales of adventure while riding public transit.
^-.-^
)Unlike Gravekeeper, I don't really have any SCs to talk about, so I can't just sandwich my bus stories in with regular posts.
For some background, I have to take two separate buses to and from work, and I take a different set of buses in the afternoon than I take in the morning.
So, on with the bus adventures!
Push the Button, Max
So, one morning I get off the first bus and mosey on over to the corner so I can cross the street to get to the stop for my second bus. There's a girl, maybe 14, already standing at the corner and I think to myself that she must have pushed the button already. She couldn't be so stupid as to not have pushed the button. Right?
So, the light changes and lo, the crosswalk does not turn green. The girl stands there like the idiot she is, because obviously you can't cross until the little crosswalk man is green, right? Since I already have no faith in people having brains, I was ready, and reached past her to punch the button.
Since this particular signal was programmed by people with brains and it's only been a couple of seconds, the crosswalk changes over, and all is right with the world. I pity today's youth.
Wattle Man
I get on the bus one morning, and there's this guy up in the front who is filthy, foul-looking, and muttering to himself. I have dubbed him Wattle Man due to the fact that he has a notable wattle. It's obvious that in the not too distant past, he was much heavier than he is now.
I go sit down and all is well. I can hear, from my position near the back door of the bus, that this guy is muttering profanities to himself in a near-constant stream. Whatever it is that the bus driver is doing, WM doesn't like it.
About three stops later, we have a wheelchair. That doesn't sit well with WM. Not well at all. WM decides that he needs to move further back into the bus to avoid the dreaded wheelchair rider. WM chooses to sit directly behind me. Aren't I lucky.
That's when I discover that WM not only looks foul, but he smells as good as he looks. Joy. And he's still muttering a fairly steady stream of bitching and profanities.
I gave him my death glare as I left the bus.
I've seen him a few other times, as well. He is always muttering profanity-laced complaints, no matter the ocaision. Only now in addition to an extreme state of unwashedness, he also sports a very grubby and dirt-encrusted plastic hospital wristband.
The Woman with No Nose
I have no idea of the circumstances, but the same day I first encountered WM, I also ran into the woman who has no nose.
The first time I saw her she looked pretty upbeat. Mostly toothless, and with a big bandage over the part of her face where her nose would be, but otherwise fairly happy.
Of the several other times I have seen her during my morning treks into work, she has looked decidedly less happy. I get the distinct inpression that she has done a lot of really hard drinking and a lot of really hard drugs. I don't know for sure, but that's surely the impression I get.
Dealer McDope
Today, I think I must have seen the most pathetically obvious dope dealer in the world, ever.
I had thought the guy who dropped his pants at the end of the Iron Maiden Somewhere in Time concert in a tribute to Bruce Dickinson, right in front of the cops was about as clueless as you get, but at least he wasn't carrying a couple hundred dollars worth of dope in a large ziploc at the local train/bus depot.
So, I'm sitting on one of the benches along the 5 bays for buses at the depot which is also a rail station. It gets a lot of traffic. My first bus was nice and late, so now I get to wait half an hour for my next second bus.
I glance over to the right as a bus lets out and watch this guy plop down on another bench. A few minutes later, another guy strolls on over, and they get to talking. The first guy has pulled out this large bag full of green leafy stuff. I'm two benches away, and I can see immediately what he's doing.
He proceeds to roll up the bag, after pulling out his customer's purchase, and then stuffs it in his sock. Yeah, like that isn't about as obvious as you get. I mocked him to the lady sitting next to me. She also found his idiocy vaguely amusing.
Then, they proceeded to sit there, smoking joints, while waiting for their bus. Considering that they didn't stub them out until after the bus had stopped and was actually waiting on them to get on, I know they must have smelled quite strongly of pot to everyone on the bus.
If you're going to be dealing a controlled substance in quantities high enough to be a felony, don't you think you'd keep a slightly lower profile?
Super Skank
I am again waiting on my connecting bus at the station. This time my first bus was only slightly late. My second bus, which was still at the station when we pulled in, decided that leaving the station during the time that anyone on the late bus would be halfway to the waiting bus was an excellent idea. Ass.
So, I sit down on one of the benches. As I'm waiting, I see this woman walking towards me and I think to myself that the dress she's wearing would look really nice if the top wasn't so loose on her.
She sits next to me. It is at that point that I can tell that the reason the dress doesn't fit right in the front is because it's half zipped down in the back. At this point, I'm thinking that perhaps she's a little ditzy.
Boy was I wrong.
While she's sitting there, on the bench next to me, in a busy train station during afternoon rush, she proceeds to reach down between her legs to wipe at her crotch with a bit of paper towel!
And if that's not nasty enough, she the proceeds to sniff at it!
Oh, yeah. I quite plainly and deliberately moved to the end of the bench.
She sat there, wiping and sniffing, for about five minutes. Then she got up and went partway behind some of the trees (probably for the shade) and continued to do whatever the hell it was she was doing.
At this point, I'm wondering how much a skanky ho charges for a go at the bus station....
The Man Who Would Not Shut Up
I am on my second, longer bus, heading in to work. I sit in my usual spot, right across from the back doors. There is a man up at the front in the very first seat right behind the front door talking to the woman two seats away from him.
I can hear him quite plainly from halfway down the bus, although I don't have the fainted idea what the hell he was saying, as he talked as if his mouth were full of marshmallows.
It's fairly obvious that the woman next to him wants him to shut the fuck up and go away. We hit another stop and he spots fresh meat getting on. One 20-something woman sits across from him, so he starts acosting her.
He's loud, he's obviously opinionated, and at this point, I can tell that he's spouting some egotistical religious crap.
My stop is coming up, so I punch the call button and stand up. At this point I make some comment about him not shutting up and I strongly believe that the man who was sitting in front of me laughed about it because the man who wouldn't shut up turned and started to give him a load of grief.
I don't know for certain why, because he still sounded like he liked to smuggle cottonballs in his cheeks. But I do know that I pissed him off when I made a parting shot as I left the bus.
I do feel somewhat sorry for the people who were still stuck with him, however.
Denied, Part i
I'm on the bus, waiting for the layover at the station to be over so we can get moving. A guy gets on the bus and tries to use a Metro Rail day pass to ride. This bus is not part of the Metro system, and so that day pass is useless.
The guy whines a bit, but gives up and pays the whopping $0.90 it costs to ride the bus. (the bus company must make a ton of money they don't have to claim because people just shove a dollar into the slot, rather than feed in 90 cents in coins)
Denied, Part ii
Another guy steps onto the bus and says, "I'm going to need a transfer, right?"
The bus driver appears to have been dealing with idiots all shift, because he's decidedly not amused. He lets the guy know that, "Yes, you're going to need a transfer."
The guy then asks how long the layover is. The bus driver tells him three minutes. The guy, full of hope, asks if it's ten minutes. The bus driver crushes his hope and repeats that it's only three minutes.
The guy runs off, ostensibly to get the transfer he should have had in the first place.
Denied, Part iii
Another guy (they're all guys that day) steps up onto the bus and flashes a monthly pass. I had used a token myself, because it was the beginning of the month, and I had neglected to replace my monthly pass yet.
Obviously, this guy had also neglected to replace his pass, or was otherwise unaware that it was now August, and the bus driver gave him a no go on the expired pass.
The guy whines and wheedles for a few minutes, but finally gives up in the face of the bus driver's lack of caring, and pulls out a dollar to feed into the machine.
Denied, Epilogue
So, we finally leave, about five minutes after Part ii guy took off.
The guy from Part ii never reappeared, so he either found alternate arrangements, or he was waiting the 30 minutes for the next bus.
The Man Who Would Not Shut Up, Wheelchair Edition
I'm at the stop waiting for my second bus one morning, and this guy in a wheelchair rolls up.
He singles out this young woman who is holding a few books and appears to be headed to the college that happens to be either the same stop or one stop past my stop for work.
He starts talking to her. The first thing I notice is that he's loud. Sporting event at the stadium, loud. Loud out of all proportion to what is required on the sidewalk at a bus stop at 7:30 in the morning.
The second thing I notice is that he's talking about consiracy theories and how the government and big business are all evil and out to get us and blah, blah, blah. I'm surprised this guy wasn't sporting a tinfoil hat!
Both the school woman and I were rescued from his ranting when the bus pulled up. There were already two people in wheelchairs on, and there are only two stations for people in wheelchairs, so Mr Conspiracy Theory had to wait for the next bus to get a ride.
The silence was golden.
They're Your Brats, So Stop Ignoring Them
I've had the misfortune to share the bus with this crew two different times, now, and to say I am not impressed is an understatement.
The group consists of two women, one of which is small-ish, neatly dressed, and obviously coming home from work. The other woman is grossly obese, wears clothes that don't really fit, and doesn't appear to be particularly responsible.
Between them, they have four toddlers with them. The smaller woman has one that is less than a year old, and another that's possibly three. Aside from the fact that the older one likes to scream, they're not so bad.
The larger woman is in charge of two tykes who I would guess to be about two and four. They are both hyperactive and very, very noisy. LW keeps a small collection of junk food (like Cheetoes and wafer cookies) on hand to try to bribe her pair of charges to behave. Otherwise, she does absolutely nothing to keep them from annoying everybody else on the bus.
Nothing.
The last time I was on with them, I watched as the older of her pair dropped his wafer on the seat, picked it up, then dropped it on the floor. I know that she looked at it on the floor and just left it there. Meanwhile, both of her charges are grinding wafer dust and Cheetos into the seats as they squirm around.
Oh, and they like to take up one entire side of the front of the bus. You know, the place where you're supposed to keep space for the elderly and handicapped.
I watched as a very ghetto-looking 20-something gave up his seat for an older lady. I, personally, gave up my seat so another older woman could have it. (she was quite happy to not have to walk further back into the bus. I was happy to not have to be so close to the terrors at the front of the bus. win-win) Then, the guy with the cane and obvious foot prosthetic limped onto the bus. The terror squad ignored him and forced him to hobble past the seats that should have been available to the next available one, which was right in front of my new spot, near the back doors of the bus.
I'm not so upset at the smaller woman, but the other one I loathe.
.....
That's all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to chime in with your own fun tales of adventure while riding public transit.
^-.-^
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