More adventures in urban public transportation

Yesterday's ride home started normally enough, got on the first bus, sat down, then heard my name. WTF? Turns out a friend R was on the same bus. Quelle surprise! We chatted for a bit, then she had to get off a few stops later. Apparently she takes that bus every day, too. Very cool. And that made me feel very urbanite, running into a friend on the bus and knowing I might see her any morning or evening.

Then came the Soul Train adventure.

First of all, it was a short old bus, not one of the nice, new double buses with the nice signs and the lady telling you what the next stop is.

Secondly, it was packed - standing room only, which I hate.

Thirdly, it was filled with crazy people. When I finally got to sit down, it was next to this smelly big dude in workman's overalls who was harassing another black Carib dude across the aisle for wearing a suit, telling him he could beat him up; when he found out the guy was a lawyer, he started saying that it was his JOB to break laws and that he hadn't paid taxes in years. Lovely. Well, finally he got off the bus, still spouting his rhetoric, taking most of his funky smell with him (I think some of it lingered on my beautiful wool coat) and an Italian guy sat next to me. He was about 55 years old, and asked me what I was reading. As it happens to be City of Falling Angels (by John Berendt, the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), which is about Venice after the fire which destroyed the opera house in 1996, we started chatting. And then, EEEUUUWWWW, he asked me out for drinks. Dude, you're old enough to be my father! (okay, barely, but still!) He took my gentle rejection quite nicely, though, and we continued chatting. He was actually quite interesting; he's a journalist working here. So then he left. It got better from there, but then another girl got the harassment. Poor thing. This drunk guy was trying to hit on her and would not leave her alone until he finally wobbled his way off the bus. She ended up riding past her stop just to avoid having him follow her.

And that, combined with my morning experience at the bus stop, was my day of adventures in urban public transportation. I swear, you can't make this shit up. I love this city.