More Bus Adventures

Riding the city bus means that you experience joining others in their daily journey. Many of the riders are regulars, with the bus being their only means of transportation around the city. Being a small city with 6 bus routes, and the rotation of bus drivers from route to route, the regulars call each other by name, and greetings are shared with the bus drivers. Its a community of people that have come to know a little bit about each other due to the minutes spent together on the bus, traveling to and from destinations.

I rode the bus to work on Friday late morning. The bus had far more riders than what I typically see earlier in the day. Interestingly, some were the regulars that I've met at those earlier times, or on my ride home. A new experience was that the bus picked up an elderly man in an electric wheelchair scooter. The driver had some difficulties with getting the lift to deploy, but eventually the lift did its service, and the man joined the rest of us on our morning trip. He was on his way to do grocery shopping with his wife. It was great to see that the bus could easily accommodate his needs, something that I would never have seen on the city buses I rode 40 years ago when I was kid. The loading and unloading did put the bus a little behind schedule, but other things do that too...like when lots of high school students ride to school, or the bus has to take me out to my work place.

The interesting interaction for me happened when I got to one of the transfer points where I change buses. It is by a chain store, and after I got off the bus, one older gentleman that had been seated a couple seats from me, kindly came up to me and asked if I could help him. He was Hispanic and seemed to have trouble conversing in English. He wanted to know if the store had a vision center that could fix his glasses. He showed me that the screw was missing and his lens had fallen out. I showed him where the vision center was, and he went on his way to have his glasses repaired.

I pondered on this interaction after I got onto the bus that would take me to my work. I thought about all the other folks that had been riding on the bus, and wondered why he picked me from the many. Maybe it was because I was the only "professional" riding the bus, or maybe it was because I was close to his age and had a kind face. I will never know. I did have a warm feeling, though, about having helped the man find his way. I thought how if I'd been driving in my car, I probably would never have had that interaction. I can still see his kind face, and the polite way he asked his question.

Riding the bus. The other thing I enjoyed on my journey was the ability to look out the window at the scenery. The bus drives along the lake shore, and the lake on Friday morning was a deep blue green, with waves rolling into shore. I enjoyed the autumn sunshine sparkling off the water, the blue sky meeting the water on the horizon, while I prepared to begin my work day.

S~