My Family’s Money

Today I learned another one of the dangers of bus riding – early buses.

My mornings are generally pretty straight forward. Get up early, eat breakfast, shower, dress, get food, play guitar, head off to the bus stop. I normally like to get out of the house between 6:20 AM and 6:24 AM to make sure I can make it to my stop before the bus arrives sometime after 6:30 AM. This morning I made it out of the house at 6:24 AM after sweetly singing Screeching Weasel’s “I love you” into my wife’s ear in my deepest most sexiest sexy voice – deep and low like the Barry White. Still high on life, I jaunted down the road to my stop no more than 0.4 miles away. As I approach a left turn that I take to get to my stop I see my bus pulling out to make a left turn and start driving away from me. A quick glance down at my watch reads 6:28 AM. Gah!

Then I heard it – “Lieutenant Dan. Ice cream!” I knew what I had to do. Anything else would mean being late to work and having to stay late at work. That was not going to happen. So I just started running. I knew that the bus always waited at the last stop before it gets on the freeway if it got there before its scheduled departure time. I had to make it there before the bus left in about 13 minutes. I didn’t know how far it was, but I knew I had to get there.

At first the cool morning air kept me refreshed and invigorated, but after the first 0.2 miles my lungs began to burn with the price of neglect and my legs ached. Then I hit the uphill. The burning in my lungs spread to my heart as it worked harder than it has since my annual Turkey game that leaves me bruised and my body slightly less aligned. I reach the crest of the hill spent, but I see my bus taunting me from its landing and running down hill is a lot easier. I have to cross the street so I jaywalk and trample underfoot some seriously cut back ground cover on the median. I can’t complete the jay because the oncoming traffic would have killed me so I continue slowly down the faux cobbled median, stupid concrete bumps trying to kill me.

Before I know it I am across the street and flying down the sidewalk, taking off my hooded sweatshirt as I feel sweat begin to pool in my elbow pits. The last 0.2 miles of the trip seem easy until I hear what I think are start-up-and-pull-away noises from the bus. My pace picks up until I realize that the bus isn’t going anywhere just yet.

The bus driver looks shocked to see me as I pull up to the door with my pass in hand. I make my way back to my sitting area and flop down exhausted. I realize just how hot the bus is after about 10 seconds of sitting there. I’m up at the front of the bus asking the driver if it is okay if I wait outside before the sweat makes me seriously stinky. He pulls himself away from his paper to let me know that I have about three minutes. I didn’t look at my watch, but I am deducing that I made my journey in about 8 minutes given the bus time posted on the internet for my stop. Google tells me I traveled about 0.8 miles in that time span. I never want to do that again, but its nice to know that I can make if I have to. My legs are still achy.

Lesson learned: show up early to the bus or be in better shape, pick your poison