Thursday, February 10, 2011

crazy bus rides/sorry about yesterday

so somehow yesterday i managed to totes forget to blog at all about my bus trips. i have all the times for them and everything, but at this point, i'm really more focused on today's bus rides, and nothing out of the ordinary happened in that none of my buses were more than five or six minutes late, there was no good cruising, and i didn't die in a public transit accident.

but today was a somewhat exciting day to ride the bus. i will intersperse my adventures with the bus times:
starting with my departure this morning:

54 departs California & Barton at 11:24am (three minutes late)
54 arrives 3rd & Seneca at 11:56am (six minutes late)

this lateness was caused by a WHOLE FUCKING PRESCHOOL getting on the bus, each kid with a parent. it was fucking crazy. btw, one of the moms had the ugliest fucking shoes on ever and i'm really sad that i didn't take a picture. my bus was standing room only at 11:30 in the morning. this has never happened and i had to discontinue my book reading in order to listen to my ipod so i could drown out the screaming voices of 20 four year olds.

72 departs University St. Station at 12:01pm (three minutes late)
i had to run to catch this bus, and the only reason i caught it was because it was late.
72 arrives 41st & University at 12:13pm (six minutes late)

they just couldn't keep it together on either of these bus rides. i have no idea what was going on but both of them were just crazy.today. also, i'd like to point out that on metro trip planner if i enter that i'm leaving university st. station at noon, it doesn't give me the 12:01pm bus option it automatically skips to the 12:12pm bus option, because it's going to take me more than 60 whole seconds to step from the bus platform onto the bus obvz.

Here's where my night got a little crazy. My friend Jesse is in town this weekend from Montana for the Social Distortion show. I met him through my times in the Young Communist League USA. I met up with him and some of his friends who live in town in the far northern reaches of Ballard at a bar called the Rickshaw Restaurant. On Thursdays ALL DRINKS ARE ONLY $3!!!! $3!!!!! It was amazing, and totally made up for the kinda shitty bus ride there. I had never been to Ballard before so I had to take two buses that i've never rode to get there.

44 departs 41st & 15th at 6:29pm (on time)
44 arrives at NW Market and 8th at 6:53pm (five minutes late)

28 departs 8th & nw market at 7pm (seven minutes late)
28 arrives at 3rd ave nw and 105th at 7:09pm (thirteen minutes late)

i'd like to say a few things about this trip. first, when i was timing this trip, i first tried to use google maps because i was on my ipod touch and its just easier to use the maps feature than it is to open a browser. Google Maps trip planner didn't even recognize the 44 as an option for me, even though i was entering in the exact location of the bus stop. Like i say, always double check your sources with others. I check any route that i'm unfamiliar with, with both metro's trip planner and Google Maps.

I've never been to ballard or greenwood or whatever the fuck you want to call the neighborhood, but both of these buses were pretty shitty when it came to being on fucking time. the 44 got stuck hella in Wallingford. I've never taken the bus through that neighborhood, but the streets are really narrow and there were WAY too many cars in Wallingford for such a tightly packed neighborhood and they clogged the shit out of the roads there. Glad I don't live there. I was pretty pissed that the 28 ended up being 13 minutes late, i don't how the fuck that happened. There was no traffic at all once i got on the 28, it just didn't make sense. anyways, i had a really good time at the Rickshaw with Jesse and his friends. AND it turns out that Jesse has turned one of his friends on to my blog and he reads it too!!! Yay! I have more than three readers!

Next up is the ride home, I was SUPER fortunate in that the bus that runs half a block away from Rickshaw (the 5) turns into the 54 when it gets into Belltown, meaning that I didn't have to transfer and it only took me around an hour to get home from there, which i would've thought would've taken me two hours. A trip that, according to Google Maps, could have taken me up to 50 minutes in traffic if i was driving.

5 departs 105th & greenwood at 10:03pm (one minute late)
(turns into 54 downtown)
54 arrives at california & barton at 10:56pm (eleven minutes late)

they must have that route misconfigured because there weren't that many people on the 5 going into downtown yet it was still eight minutes late arriving at the bus stop i usually hop on the 54 at.

enough of this. hella long blog post, if you made it all the way to the end i congratulate you. and if you live in seattle, let's go to rickshaw next thursday to get wasted on $3 drinks (including liquor drinks) and sing hilarious laser disc karaoke!!!!!

xxxo
-jean

3 comments:

  1. Its Angelica! im reading your blog sporadically so I can live in Seattle vicariously through you. lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. Since moving to Columbia City Station, I have been using the Link a lot more. Unfortunately the best app for smart phones--OneBusAway--is working on being more accurate with the Link. However, for the buses it is pretty accurate.

    Maybe I should start posting my rants here instead of Facebook about how Metro/Sound Transit is still unaware that the Link is MASS TRANSIT not PUBLIC TRANSIT. Since December, only 3 times did I experience no delays in the DT tunnel. Wednesday evening rush hour we were delayed almost 10 mins @ Pioneer Square Station because of a disabled bus at Chinatown Station.

    HINT, HINT: MASS TRANSIT DOESN'T GET DELAYED BY TRAFFIC. It is no longer mass transit then. Here's hoping they wake up & smell the coffee soon. Hell, we're in Seattle. Unless one has crappy smelling senses, it is really easy to smell the coffee in Seattle.

    Namaste, TTFN & Blessed Be!
    Kirk aka Tiggs

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, I gotta say...

    The 44 is terrible about being on time... I've gone to the Rickshaw a few times to meet up with one of my good friends who is usually there on Tuesdays... From the U Dist, I have just walked to the 5 a few times. That or take the 30 to the 5. Doesn't always save any time, but at least I'm not sitting there thinking about how late the 44 is.

    ReplyDelete