Rode my motorcycle into work this morning.

(it’s a gum cig… yes, I blew out the powder first.. because i’m a badass..)

Ok.  What’s with Fridays?  Is it the cumulative stress of the week?  Is Friday the point where the dam just breaks and all those pent-up frustrations need to be expressed or you’ll just die?

So once again we had a relatively new bus driver this morning.  Who happened to be a whole 3 minutes early at the stop.  Now most (read normal) people would know that this is a possibility (probability) and plan accordingly.  Buses are early.  Buses are late.  Some buses break down and never ___ing show up at all.  You roll with the punches - that’s just the way it is with public transportation.  You just deal.

Yeah.  Tell that to the guy who confronted the bus driver about it.  And when I say confronted, I mean he was confrontational.  He didn’t say “Oh, by the way, did you know that you’re a little early this morning?”  No no no no.  That would have been the polite way, and really - who’s polite anymore? 

First, a little background about the irate passenger.  I know he works for Washington Mutual in their IT department.  I know he hates his job and that he thinks everyone (bosses and underlings alike) is an idiot there.  I know that he complains about it every bloomin’ chance he gets.  (Yes, he’s one of those.) 

So he verbally attacks the bus driver after the bus driver kindly points out that he’s new to the route and that the bus times changed slightly in June.  Irritated passenger suddenly morphs into enraged self-righteous passenger actually yelling at the bus driver now (while said driver is carefully negotiating those hairpin turns on the way to Fall City).  The bus driver even showed him his route card, showing the stops and the stated times.  I thought the passenger was going to hit him.  I almost wish the driver had kicked him off. 

Anyone who has ridden the Seattle bus system knows that drivers have time points along the route.  If they’re running a little bit early, there are certain stops where they can sit for a minute or two and let the clock catch up, so to speak.  This keeps them from being too early at their larger bus stops - say at the Park & Ride stops.  Our bus stop is not a time point.  I make a point of being at that bus stop 10 minutes before the bus is due to arrive.  Afterall, what’s 10 minutes when the commute is nearly 90?.  This is what books are for.  It’s just as easy to read my book while waiting for the bus as it is to read it while on the bus. 

Yeah.  Someone should explain this to Angry IT-Guy.  It just won’t be me.

The Seattle bus has always been a rather interesting experience for me.  Sometimes good, sometimes terrifying, but never really boring.  From having my hair pulled to people getting stabbed or falling down drunk, or being surrounded by police officers with guns drawn, or even once being T-boned by a speeding pickup truck… like I said, never boring.

The Snoqualmie route has taken some getting used to.  For one thing, the commuting time ranges anywhere from 75 to 90+ minutes.  The area between Snoqualmie and Issaquah is at times jaw-dropping gorgeous, so it’s somewhat worth the long commute just to see that every day, twice a day.  (Much lovelier than gazing at the graffitti that seems to multiply overnight in the city.)

Another issue has been the drivers.  For the most part, they’re fantastic.  But for the past few months our morning drivers have all been “fillers” for the route.  Which means I may see the same driver 2 or 3 times before there’s another new face behind the wheel in the morning.  This means that the drivers are not at all familiar with the route.  (Which anyone who has driven the sharply twisting road between Snoqualmie and Fall City will tell you is not a good thing - especially not when it involves tons of steel traveling at a high rate of speed.)  Several drivers have actually used the PA system to ask passengers for directions. 

Well this morning was another new face behind the wheel.  And I knew this even before he opened the door.  How?  Well, the big tip-off was when he entered the bus stop pull-off area from the wrong direction.  Which meant he needed to make a 360 degree turn to go the way we needed to go.  (If you’ve ever ridden one of the very long articulated buses, you know this is impossible without the clearance of half a football field.)  So we did a little off-roading.  Dinging the magnolia tree, crossing the street, blocking traffic, narrowly missing a street lamp (with a lovely hanging flower basket, by the way), hopping the curb into the bowling alley parking lot, narrowly missing the trailer filled with the Kiwanis leftover fireworks from the 4th, and finally pulling out onto the right street in the right direction.  I guess I should just be thankful that the road at that point doesn’t follow the river very closely.  Otherwise I think we may have found out if those articulated buses are amphibious.

We also nearly ended up in Redmond rather than in Seattle.  If a passenger hadn’t yelled out “LEFT!” when he did, I think we just may have ended up on the wrong side of Lake Washington.  (Maybe they should have amphibious buses.)

But all of this is nothing compared to the afternoon driver.  The one that cracks offensive terrorist jokes and wears the bandanna around his head like Rambo.  This one makes my stomach plummet every time I see him behind the wheel.  The man drives like Evel Knievel on crack.  He seems to take sharp turns as a challenge and is more likely to hit the gas than the brake.  After he clipped the guard rail on one very high turn (that just so happens to be at the top of a rather cliff-like hill), I opted to work until 5:30 and catch the later bus.  But there are days that I just can’t stand to sit in my cubicle any longer so I roll the dice and hope that either he’s not the driver that night, or that he won’t send us plunging off any cliffs or speeding headlong into any logging trucks.  When he drives, I keep my head down and eyes firmly on the pages of my book.  If I can’t see the scenery flying past, the cars he nearly runs over, or the looming doom, I can just make it without screaming “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SLOW DOWN!”

So all things considered, off-roading in the bowling alley parking lot isn’t such a bad commute afterall.

This morning was a bit of a rush. So when I put on my shirt, I failed to notice that the zipper didn’t completely engage at the bottom. (Yes, it’s a shirt that zips.) I can’t be sure at what moment the zipper teeth actually began to separate. But I’m sure it was well before the moment I actually noticed that I was half naked, which was when I sat in my seat on the bus and thought gee, my shirt feels different today. Thank god I was wearing my jacket. Even though it’s late June, mornings in Snoqualmie can be rather chilly, being closer to the mountains. I was able to button it up tight until I could rush into the nearest bathroom an hour later in downtown Seattle (Starbucks) to fix myself. Which thankfully I was able to do after much tugging and pulling on that zipper.

I’m fairly certain that during at least half of my walk to the bus stop my shirt was barely covering my womanly parts. And of course my normally people/car free walk wasn’t people/car free. I can distinctly remember at least 3 cars and one woman walking her dogs. Now I know why she didn’t answer my “good morning”. I was the crazy half-dressed woman rushing down the sidewalk with half my shirt flapping to the side.

The universe has an evil sense of humor.

(Until Sarah get’s in the posting mood, here’s a copy of a posting from her other blog before we moved to this one. -Steven)

Originally posted on Monday, February 27, 2006

For some inexplicable reason, I felt the irresistable need to look down and make sure that yes, I did remember to put on pants this morning. Of course, by this time I was already on the bus to work so one would hope that I was appropriately attired. But why pants? I was fairly certain that I had on my socks and shoes. Shirt - check. Skivvies - check. Pants? Was that a draft? Dear God, did I forget to put on pants?! Nope. Pants securely in place.

Apparently it’s one of those mornings.

It didn’t help that Ludwig (den Wunderhund) decided that 2 AM should be play time. I was startled awake by him hurtling his whole 6 pounds onto my chest in full play mode - tail wagging and tongue darting for my unprotected nostrils. He was more than a little miffed that I wasn’t participating. He spent a few minutes sitting by my head, harumphing. (Yes, my chihuahua harumphs. Quite well in fact.)

Speaking of the drive mentioned below, that’s when you can make the drive. Today the 520 bridge was closed during the height of afternoon rush hour due to high winds. The white in the traffic cam shot above is water breaking over the bridge.

This bridge, known formally as the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, traverses Lake Washington connecting Seattle and Bellevue. You can see it in the picture of the previous post at the very bottom left. The bridge is the longest floating pontoon bridge in the world, measuring in at 7,578 feet long. So far, it has only sunk once.