I’ve settled into my work commute. For the foreseeable future I will walk through the Checkers parking lot to the bus stop at 14th and H Northeast, take the X2 (or mythical X9) to Gallery Place Chinatown, transfer to the Metro’s Redline, disembark at Dupont circle, ascend the infamous escalator (walking!) and scurry across the street to my office. I’ve dabbled in a few other experimental routes, other bus lines, Union Station, etc, but it seems the above mentioned route is the most reliable. It takes me 37-47 minutes each way.
I like riding the bus, because I like watching the city go by, but there’s a skill to it. First of all, there are city bus-riding rules that I’ve followed since my days of riding the M14 up First Avenue to the UN in NYC. I always go as far back as possible. This is because I don’t want to have to give up a seat should I be lucky to get one. This is a guaranteed strategy, but should some elderly woman with a shopping cart or a dad with three children make it all the way to the back of a double length bus without anyone giving up their seat, I’m happy to sacrifice mine.
I also like the back of the bus, because that’s where the real crazy is. How could I miss out on the teenager playing his gansta rap ipod without plugging his headphones in? (Nothing like a little “Move B---h Get Out The Way” in the morning.) Or the semi-homeless guy taking up 3 and a half seats in the back? Or the old guy shouting about the Redskins game to both the person on the other end of his phone and the entire bus?
I also follow the rule of taking the first bus that comes and not waiting for the express. This is especially necessary in DC where an express bus comes every 20 or 9 or 37 minutes every other hour three times a week.
Also one must not pay attention to the individual stops or to traffic, for this could drive one postal. Yesterday for example, there was very bad traffic for a couple of blocks and as I tucked neatly into my Kindle, the guy next to me was fidgeting like mad and cursing under his breath. Amateur.
There are, however, irresistible habits of bus riding that I do succumb to, like bemoaning the wheelchair rider (that’s right I do it and you do it too!) Even though technology has improved greatly, it still wastes a good 3.5 minutes of the commute waiting for a wheelchair to get off or on and that’s not ok when you’re rushing to or from the office. Driving me equally batty is getting stuck behind the guy that pays his bus fare in nickels. Click…click…click…and so on for 30 individual nickel clicks. Really? Who even has nickels anymore?!
There are of course endearing moments on the bus, which is a bonding experience unique to the bus. The other day a woman got on a very crowded bus with three kids under the age of two. She was about 18 or 19. She wasn’t offered a seat, because there were a whole mess of grannies that were not going to get up from their precious and well earned seats, but they did offer to take the kids. One schmoopy per granny and the whole bus smiled. Another time I witnessed a brief exchange about a book a woman was holding turn into an entire nerdy sci fi conversation between a young white guy and an older black woman. Talk about May-December. These two could not stop geeking out!
It is interesting that although my commute is equal parts bus and metro, my stories come from the bus. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s because of the nature of the riders or of the vehicles. Is there some sort of subterranean depressant on the metro platform that dissipates as one ascends and fresh air rushes back into one’s lungs?
I don’t yet have my finger on why, but I sure am thinking about it as I get on the bus.
