April

Wowza, is it gonna be April already?  Don't forget to grab your new pass on Tuesday morning! 

curling up with a good book...

It may be counterintuitive that one of the only places I get to do that is on my commute; thinking of the public bus doesn't typically conjure images typically involving snuggling up with a warm pile of pillows, a cup of tea (or coffee, as we are in the Pacific Northwest), and some choice reading material.  But on Friday, with the weird snow-slush-rain-hail, the #1 passed my stop when I was a block away on Lawrence.  I headed down to the stop by Starbucks with the shelter and waited until the next one (did I mention I love that I only have 15 minutes to wait whenever I miss this line?  Just enough to walk a few blocks, shake off some tension, and sit for a few minutes).  It was a wonderful thing to step onto that heated bus, peel off my hat and coat and pull out my book to get lost in its pages. 

Jennifer, student

Causing a Bus Ruckus

        Yep, I caused a ruckus on the bus yesterday.  I travel to Seattle at least twice a week via the 594 for an internship in the art department of Anthropologie.  At first, the hour commute was taking a toll on my agenda to get stuff done (which consists of too many side projects; not enough homework), but I have come to find the commute to be a great time to work on projects.  At work, I am around so many creative people and we work on some pretty outlandish art installations so I usually leave the store fully inspired.  When I board the 594, I love opening my sewing bag and pulling out the new shirt I am decking out with knotted fabric or scarf I am embroidering.  So, back to the ruckus.  My newest bustime project is hand-sewing lace decor to a plain grey t-shirt.  While the bumpiness of the busride can become a nuisance, I usually work around it, but this time it got the best of me.   The bus hit a bump and sent my thread flying under the seat across the aisle.  I kindly asked the woman next to me if she could reach under and grab it for me, and while she was nice enough to help, the bus hit another bump mid-reach.  The end of the thread stuck under her seat, but the spool rolled towards the front of the bus, then towards the back, and all around, creating a spidersweb of thread wound around the bus.  By this time, people had taken notice.  The man sitting behind me was directing everyone reaching for the spool as it rolled around the bus floor.  Finally, after a few minutes of quite the thread ruckus, the spool rolled right back to my seat and I reached down and cut it from the tangled web it had created.  I thanked everyone who had tried to catch the runaway thread spool and let some people who were still looking for it know that it returned home safely.  While I still plan on using my bustime to work on projects, I think I am going to make my next project a harness of all my tools so I don't become the bus disturbance again.

Paige, student

bus blog

I got a great xmas gift that I use on my long 1 hour 45 min commutes: a portable DVD player. Its the easiest way to pass away so much time. Of course I go through DVDs like hotcakes so I have both a Netflix and a Blockbuster account. I think I'm gonna watch all 4 seasons of House while commuting next month. Also, doesn't it just make your day when you catch all your buses at the exact times and make it to your destination earlier than you thought. That happened to me yesterday, and it was mucho nice-o.

Daniel, student

Mentholatum

There comes a moment, when one is mentally composing the next blog for this series, usually during the commute hours, when one asks oneself, “Would this be appropriate, as a reporter’s item that will encourage other UPSers to use public transport? Would this report, of the opposite of fun and games aboard public transport, turn readers off, and make them stick to their private cars?”

But then I imagined some perverse, inverted universe, if UPS were trying to encourage single car commuting. Would any blog reporting an accident, or pull-over for traffic violation, discourage anyone? Hardly, since in actual life those sightings are usual in daily car commuting, with passing motorists probably saying to themselves, that’ll never happen to me, or if so, it will be mañana, a nebulous future too indistinct to worry about. Or the passing car driver in a clunker experiences Schadenfreude, if the car in the incident is very high-end. But that kind of glee would also likely not be expressed on the blog, unless the UPS blogger is oblivious to what that kind of diatribe would do to her/his campus repute.

But speculating about jeremiads against Hummer aggressors on I-5 takes me too far from what I wanted to talk about, about what we public transport commuters should report, or suppress, in reporting about our rides. Yes, not all the experiences are pleasant, no more than for the single-car motorists. The following report is one example, but also perhaps one where the reader can use in other situations.

One afternoon, an elderly man got on the Tacoma-Seattle bus. He exuded an overpowering odor, from not having bathed for months or whatever. He sat at the front of the bus, and we riders quickly moved as far away to the back as we could—fortunately the bus was half empty that afternoon. The bus driver didn’t have the option of relocating. She was stuck there at the wheel, with the man sitting three feet away. She drove as fast as she legally could to Seattle, or maybe a little faster, while periodically telling the passengers over her intercom how sorry she was about situation. (The drivers do care about us.)

Should such a situation occur in the future, I am now prepared, thanks to someone who knows about autopsies and dissections on ripe specimens. Smear a little Mentholatum in your nostrils to suppress the stench. So now I carry a little jar of it in my book bag, and you may want to carry the same salve also, not just for the bus, but also for other occasions, if for instance in a funeral cortège car you find yourself trapped sitting next to an elderly aunt with negligent hygiene.

Fortunately, this odiferous event has never been repeated on the busses I ride. The accidents and pull-overs of single car vehicles seen from the bus windows, however, occur almost daily.

Wallace, Faculty