I hopped on, opened my newspaper, and was promptly whisked to St. Paul on the 94C.

Fuck.

I swear that some of the lights were burned out on the route sign on the front of the bus, converting that “94″ into a “14″. Or perhaps I simply willed myself into seeing a 14. We shall never know.

At any rate, I was blown significantly off course, and as luck would have it, I forgot my cell phone today as well, so I was kind of up a creek without a paddle. Left with only my wits and a bus pass, I hiked from the first stop in St. Paul (I-94 and Snelling) to Marshal and Fry street and waited for a west-bound bus that I hoped would take me down Lake Street to the point where I could get back on my usual 14 at Bloomington Ave. After waiting 15 minutes in the chilly wind, I was joined by a group of three Chinese students who had no idea when the next bus was coming either. Somebody in a silver car honked at me as I stood there with my collar up – if you are a Bike Lover or friend, be advised that I could have used a lift…

At any rate, my Chinese students and I, travelers joined by fate, finally boarded a west-bound 21 and that took us down the hill to MPLS. Despite a little language barrier, we all sort of made friends as they practiced their English on me and I coached them on how to get to the Mall of America via the Light Rail. We wished each other a safe journey as they headed south on the train and I continued on to Bloomington, only to wait again for a 14 and finally made it home after wasting a little over an hour on a transit tour of the Twin Cities.

Next happy hour, I am just going to ride my bike.

One small benefit of taking the bus is more time for reading, which is more important now that I’ve got an active book club to participate in.

I am convinced that if America is a melting pot, then the bus is cauldron where the real work gets done. Downtown office women, students, immigrants, slackers, down-and-outers and up-and-comers all sway together in (mostly) silent communion, brought together by happenstance and the need to somewhere else.

The bus is a real world cultural “butterfly effect” experiment that unfolds every morning and evening. Invisibly and imperceptibly passengers influence each other, as we move together, many parts as one unit, lurching along towards our now shared destiny.

Everyday the rest of the passengers and I would ride to our destinations without bringing attention to this woman. One day a group of kids from my school got on and sat near her. Throughout the whole ride they made fun of her laughing loudly the whole time.

I’ll never forget that day because it was more proof that humans are cruel when they don’t understand someone or something. I still saw her for a few years after that around the neighborhood. Every time I saw her I became sad because she was a reminder of the cruelty I witnessed.

When a bus is this late it’s usually bad news – something went wrong and now the driver is off schedule and crabby, the bus is often full to capacity and most of passengers will be cranky. What’s more, with all those people on the bus, inevitably you end up stopping at every stop along the way, which makes the whole situation steadily worse rather than better.

Because the bus was so late, a suspiciously friendly stoner girl’s transfer expired while we were waiting, but lucky for her she had time to work the crowd to drum up some coin for the fair (If I ever see you again, you owe a dollar, Tess from Texas). When the bus finally arrived, I could immediately tell what the problem was – our driver was cautious to a fault. I am no fan of careening around South Minneapolis on a run-away bus, but at some level that’s better than crawling home. As we lurched and bumped our way out of downtown we were passed by another 14. Yes – we had been caught, and passed, by the bus behind us.

I made it home about 45 minutes later than when I should have gotten home (it’s a 30 minute ride). When we finally arrived at my stop, I thanked the driver and stepped off the bus, immediately slipping on the ice and going face-down like a bag of hammers for the first time this winter. A fitting end to my ride on the bus of the damned.

Cross posted at Snak Shak

I suggested that they should be given a little slack, seeing that they had arrived only months before.

She sniffed, “They could find jobs if they wanted to. There are plenty of jobs out there, even for people who don’t speak English. Why, when my grandfather came over from Sweden, he had a job within 24 hours of arriving in Minneapolis.”

I asked what kind of a job he had found.

“Mucking out stalls in a livery stable,” she said proudly. “I don’t see why some of those Vietnamese couldn’t do that.”

He seemed genial enough at first until we arrived at the outer limits of downtown. We hit head-on the thousands of Vikings and Packers fans engorged on adrenaline and the suburbanites who don’t know how to drive in the city. Mr. Rascal, as I’ll call him, started complaining about the traffic with a simple, “Ga, I CAN’T believe this.” His rants escalated; the driver was calm (almost drugged calm) all the while.

As I’m ready for the bus to pull up to my stop, Mr. Rascal says that he has to pee really bad but his stop isn’t for another 15-20 minutes. In response, the driver says, “Sir, just take a deep breath. I’ll take care of worrying about the traffic and driving the bus. You just hold your pee. We’ll be there soon”. I heard this so distinctly because the driver said it over the intercom.

Mr.Rascal, I hope you didn’t wet your sweatpants on that rainy day.

The first few times I took great care to squeeeeeze past her without thwapping my bag into her face or knocking her headcovering off. After about a week of this madness (and almost tripping and smashing my face into the seat across the aisle) I gave up and resigned to just letting whatever happen, happen. I got a couple of good hard thwacks in with my bag.

She hasn’t sat next to me since.

Wanted to beat him or slam him or something but was incredulous that it even happened. Won’t ride the Payne Ave, Route 64 now, as many other routes…unless in a pinch. Think about it folks, depending on how far you’re going, a cab is is only a few bucks more. East side went to hell when the “Real” bikers left…and I’m not a biker!!!

But the reason she was struggling is because she was wearing 5 INCH HEEL PAYLESS KNEE-HIGH BOOTS!! I’ve never seen someone look so uncomfortable in a pair of shoes!! She could barely walk, barely make it on the bus, and barely sit down. Not only were the boots apparently uncomfortable, but they also made her too TALL for her cane

After a short ride, she proceeded to get off the bus – struggling just as hard and making noise. The whole time I’m thinking “TAKE OFF THE DAMN PAYLESS BOOTS, DUH!!”