Ode to the 46

I love the bus. I honestly do. I love that I can relax and read or close my eyes for a while as someone else handles the stress of the traffic. I like the exercise I get walking to and from the bus stops. I like the virtuous feeling I get from reducing my carbon footprint. Sure, I could get everywhere twenty minutes faster if I drove myself, but I genuinely like the bus. It gives me an excuse to spend some time with my books or my blogs read on the blackberry. It's the only time in my life right now when I can read without feeling guilty because I should be doing something else (research, exercise, talking with my almost-husband, whatever...not that talking with Penn counts as a chore because it doesn't, but you get what I mean, I hope). 'I can do actual work on the bus if need be, but I've come to appreciate my commute as my time to relax and be by myself. It's pathetic, maybe, that my life is so full right now that most of my me time comes on the bus, but that's just how it is until the dissertation is finished.
Sometimes I feel like I should film a PSA for the bus: "Young, attractive, middle class white woman regularly rides city bus and survives!!" I don't understand why I am consistently the only white person on the bus, especially out in the semi-suburbs where I live. In the city it's a bit better and sometimes I'm not the only white person on the bus, but most of the time I am. What causes the white middle-class stigma against riding the bus? All the people in the world who complain that they don't have a free moment in the day don't know what they're missing.
I want to tell everyone I know, "Take the bus! You'll feel productive, because you're commuting, but you can read a book or listen to music without your kids or your boss or your friends pestering you!"

Not that the bus experience is always perfect. Today, for instance, I had to do a tutoring session for one of my high school students and then go to my dermatologist to make sure none of my bazillion freckles are morphing into anything weird. Penn has the truck with him two hours away, so I had to get to these appointments on the bus.

I had to catch one bus near my (temporary) house and then transfer to another bus fifteen minutes later. Well, the first bus was running late and as we were approaching the stop where I was going to need to transfer I saw the bus I needed to transfer to: driving right in front of the bus I was currently on. Grrrrrr. The drivers can't contact each other (I was on a city bus and I needed to transfer to a county bus run by a different company entirely) so I knew there would be no way I could get off of my bus and hop onto the other one. The one I needed would already be on its way up the street. Luckily I know the system well enough now that I knew the bus I was on would get me to a train station and from there it would be a one-stop train ride and then a slightly longer walk than I would have had from the bus stop. Still, it was annoying to be stuck on the first bus watching the second one cruise obliviously in front of me.
Then I was waiting for my bus to the doctor's office when it drove right past my stop without stopping, despite the fact that I was holding my bus card in the air in the unofficial "Please stop for me" gesture. I was like, "What the hell?!" and I jumped up and down to try to get the driver's attention and then began to sprint up the street after the bus, hoping the driver would see me and slam on the brakes. Then behind me I heard loud honking. I turned around and, lo and behold, there was another bus for the exact same route! I always dream that will happen when I miss the bus, that maybe this one time there will be another 46 right behind the one I just missed. Well, today there was!! Apparently the driver of the first bus that had passed by was running late (REALLY late; like half an hour late) and so she was no longer picking up customers, she was just doing drop offs. It made for an entertaining ride to the doctor's office because every time we'd approach a bus stop I would see everyone attempt to wave down the first bus, then get enraged when it passed by, then light up in surprise when they saw the second bus right behind it.
Oh, bus. You are rarely perfect, but I do like you.