Day 4

10/20/11

Eastbound

I got a text at 6:30 this morning that Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi had been killed. I receive breaking news texts from a local AM radio station, the same one I listen to in the morning on the way to work. It was all over the news I listened to on the way to work.

The machine was not working correctly on the bus and it would not accept dollars. The bus driver told the people in front of me “don’t worry about it just hop on”. I slid my card for my payment. There was a steady mixture of free riding passengers and people paying with cards or change that trickled on at the next few stops. At the stop by the mall a guy came on the bus and fixed the money machine.

The bus was relatively empty at the beginning, nobody I recognized like yesterday morning. The back was filled so I sat directly behind the bus driver so I could put my backpack on the round ledge to my left and rest it on my leg freeing up the seat next to me.

Some kids came on the bus with hair that looked like upside down jello. This must be a trend.

The kids' hair looked like this

A couple stops forward a lady got on the bus that I was able to observe. She was a bit on the heavy side and used a cane. She was dressed very classy and I heard speak on the phone, again classy. I admired the self respect and high self esteem that she portrayed.

After the lady left, a young college age girl sat in her place. The bus continued and got pretty full, so much so that a girl was standing kind of in front of me. She seemed a bit flustered and put her coffee on a ledge across from her (mistake #1). You can see the ledge to the left of the lady in the picture above. She then proceeded to put her bag in the middle of the isle (mistake #2) and try and fix/put on makeup (mistake #3). The bus came to a stop, the coffee spilled on a passenger across from me, the lady tried to pick up her bag from the middle of the isle while attempting to catch the spilling coffee and accidently made a big smudge of lipstick on her arm. It was like some kind of slow motion movie. The lady who got coffee on her was cool about it and the bus driver gave her some paper towels. I felt bad until I saw what she did next. After everything was cleaned up the coffee spiller placed the coffee on another ledge and put her bag back on the ground and returned to her makeup. “Lady, your killing me!!!!” instantly went into my head and I almost said something, but bit my tongue at the last minute. Some people must learn the hard way.

The rest of the ride went smoothly; college kids occupied and emptied most of the bus at the city college stop. By the time I go to my stop the bus was fairly empty. At least I was on time.