keeping the standards low.

Today I was on the bus and it smelled like a mixture of alcohol and little caesars pizza. Then I thought to myself 'well, I guess that's better than pee.'

SMS

Marcella writes:

There is a woman sitting across from me wearing ankle weights with hot pink straps. She also has a tinkerbell bag.

FAIL

To truly appreciate the joke here you might need to click on the picture to see it full sized. Notice the caution sign on the left hand side in particular...

Minding my own

My sister texts me:

Um so standing at the bus stop minding my own business and there's a bum laying on his side on the other side of the bench. i look over and all of a sudden there is a stream of liquid coming from him. does not even bother to stand to pee. just lets it go. by the time my bus came he had rolled over into it. and we wonder why they smell so rank

On the bus

A whole pile of Junior High guys. So cool that everyone on the bus couldn't help but want to be them when we were their age.

One says: you know if a girl punches you, you can only hit back once if she hits you twice.
His friend, uncertain: no, you should not punch girls...
Too cool to be wrong: no it's ok if you punch her once for every two times.

The thing about the bus is...

I really wanted to say: You are in charge of transit for a million people city, plus outlying areas. You should start acting like this matters. Run your transit on a German Time Clock and throw on a few extra buses. Or else you'll never win over more riders. We WOULD pay more money gladly for service that rocks, but right now that 59 bucks is like paying for someone to come and kick you in the shin every day for a month. It doesn't hurt that bad, it doesn't make us cry, but twinges every day.

A letter to ETS

I've never written a complaint to ETS, but I have written commendations over the years. This morning was a pretty terrible ride, so here's my first complaint ever to ETS.

What happened this morning:
Bus #4395 - NAIT special, left Millwoods Transit Station at 7:05. It arrived at NAIT not at 7:45 but at 8:05.

Some of us leave our houses at quarter to 7 in order to make it to school/work on time. It would be helpful to have bus drivers, routes and schedules that would accommodate us getting there on time.

First the bus driver drove down 23rd Avenue until he reached Calgary Trail when someone asked him where he was headed. Then he drove down Calgary Trail to 34th Ave, where he turned onto 34th Ave and pulled over twice to read his map. Apparently he had trouble locating Lakewood. When he nearly turned right instead of left someone got up and stood by him for the rest of the drive to make sure he knew where he was going. It arrived at Lakewood at 7:22 and left Lakewood 3 minutes later. No one got on. No one got on at Millgate either. One person got on at Bonnie Doon. Problems locating Downtown happened after that. Despite the helpful rider pointing out which exit to take in the Bonnie Doon traffic circle the bus driver still took the exit into Forest Heights. A complicated backing up procedure happened after that.

I have 4 points to make about the bus driver assigned to our route this morning:

* Better route training - Drivers should know where the Transit Centres are & where they are in relation to the others. Know where you're headed when you leave a transit centre, because your riders DO. If you don't, ASK.
* Better city training - the city layout is the same in the dark as in daylight, Downtown always is in the centre of the city, from Millwoods that is north. ALWAYS.
* Map reading skills - consult your assigned route, preferably not while driving. It has a map, check it before you leave.
* Problem solving skills - 20 or more minutes after you've missed a transit centre no one there is still waiting for YOUR bus, they've found alternate routes that know where they are headed. Just get the people STUCK on your bus to their destination without being MORE late.

While I'm still at it, I have some observations:

* Lakewood Transit Center is the only Transit Center without a clock. Why? It would be helpful to have a clock.
* Downtown Transit Center digital clock inside the shelter is still on daylights savings time. It is now 2 weeks past the time change. This is annoying.

I realize that transit gets me to where I'm going every day. I do appreciate that. These complaints come from a place that wants more people to rely on the great service ETS does provide 99% of the time.

On the bus

Last week there was a crazy person on the bus who was talking to herself... the entire bus was not looking at her in case it should encourage a new bus friend. She was complaining about the buses always being late and never arriving on time and how the bus drivers touch her bum and how the government moved her without asking, then how "they" touched every single one of her underwear and now she's in her new place and only has one pair of shoes and they took her glasses and every time she coughs she pees her pants.

She coughed a lot.

but she's right about the buses always being late.

Good morning

A bundled up lady on the bus this morning (before 7 am mind you) puked out the back door, got back on the bus and sat next to me.

On the bus

An international student asked me where the street is with the naked ladies.
"Whut?"
"The street, you know, with the naked ladies."
I concentrated very hard on not laughing out loud.
"Hmm," I said "No, no I don't know. I don't think they're naked, but I assume you mean 97 Street, past the Stadium."
"97 Street? Wait, Chinatown is on 97 Street, are you telling me to go to Chinatown?"
"Whut? Hahahaha, No! North of Chinatown, around the Stadium."
*skeptical*
"Yeah, I don't really know where you'd find a street with naked ladies, you're going to have to ask one of the guys... sorry my friend!"

The Rules

I'm thinking of a new rule that when people buy $300 mp3 players they are required to shell out for a decent pair of headphones too... a pair that channels their music directly into their brain, and not out into the rest of the bus. It's the most annoying cacophony of east indian (dingadingalinga) and thrasher metal (screaming) and techno (duffduffduff) on the bus every morning. Yesterday I swore some big dude was listening to the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing.

This is not ok with me.

Environmentalist

I've converted my Dad. On the bus ride home he called me to find out where and what make & model number my reel push mower is and brought one home. My cousin is working on her boyfriend, my brother likes it, my uncle grudingly decided it wasn't bad, my neighbour borrowed mine when hers quit, my parents neighbours hauled it over the fence to give it a try, and Diana's going to make her husband come over to try it out... pretty soon everyone I know is going to have a push mower.

I'm going to balance out the good I've brought into this world by getting everyone to convert to a push mower by buying a big, bad, gas-guzzling snowblower this year.

Smarty Pants

There is this guy who lives near my parents' who used to get on the bus looking like a hayseed. Sticking up hair looking like it was desperately slicked down, the worst case of buck teeth you've ever seen, white tube socks sticking into black runners and always pants that are too short. I feel a little sorry for him, for being just so geeky. I've never laugh at him just in case someone secretly thinks I'm a dork.

Because I do worry that my pants are too short and that someone is laughing at me behind my back. Like today, walking home from work. The back of one of my pant legs kept getting inside my shoe. Which would probably indicate that my pants were, in fact, too short. But you know what? My pants being too short means that my cuffs won't get muddy in this spring weather! So there.

bump removal program

On the bus, at conferences, at work, I have been noticing more and more people have ugly bumps.

No, I'm not talking about the odd lumpy shapes people are in, but their moles.

No, I'm not talking about nice little beauty marks, I'm talking about scary-looking, bumps-on-top-bumps, odd-shaped, wrinkled-and-deformed, definitely-cancer-hiding BUMPS.

We need to start a bump removal program.

Rain, rain, go away!

It's been pouring cats and dogs all week, and I've been miserably sick the entire week. This afternoon it was even leaking into the bus. The bus should be a safe spot, but it is not.

Funny sign

On the way home on the bus I was the only one who burst out laughing at a sign on the side of the road in front of a games store that said:

End of Summer Sale!
POO TABLES

A little PFK

A guy got off the bus ahead of mine with a 20 piece bucket of KFC under his arm.

Wanna bet everyone in the bus wanted to beat him up?

Update

Quick update to the tail bus story, two of my colleagues were sharing an embarrassing moment that someone had on the bus last night. Same story... so I asked "was the woman wearing mint green elasticized pants pulled up to just under her armpits on the 5 last night?"

Same woman. Tracey either pointed it out to her or pulled it out for her.

Tails are wonderful things.

Tails are wonderful things, if you're Tigger.

I’ve got another bus story for you:

A larger, pear-shaped lady got up from her seat on the bus yesterday -- something was fluttering behind her as she turned to walk to the back to the exit. Guess what it was? She had a long piece of toilet paper, hanging out of the back of her elasticized pants.

:( Can you imagine how it got there?

Eh?

Every day is not like another... sometimes. Usually I listen to my iPod or read a book on the bus in the mornings. Yesterday I did neither, but I did take my book out of my knapsack and have it on my lap. I ended up staring blankly out the window.

Half way through the ride a woman gets on and sits next to me and starts putting on her make-up and I thought "weird..." But she was really cute and reminded me of a friend I have.

I'm still staring blankly out the window and all of a sudden tap-tap-tap on my shoulder. It's the make-up girl and she says "Hi, do you mind if I borrowed your devotional for a couple of minutes? Like two minutes?"

Huh? "Oh... sure, here ya go."

She read a couple of chapters of Max Lucado's "Cure for the Common Life" and passed it back with a "thanks so much!"