Mass Transit hates me

Just when you think you have things under control, a bus almost hits you.

I’m not being metaphorical here.

I was on my way back from the Good Job, on my bike, listening to Wumpscut. “Mortal Highway” comes on the ol’ iPod, and I start really motoring. It’s that kind of song; if you’re driving, it makes you go faster; if you’re foolin’ around, you get a little dirtier, and if you are me on a bike, then you think you’re Lance Armstrong (but with balls…hi-ooh!). So I’m trying to set the land speed record for Zeepdoggies on crappy bikes when a Pace Bus decides that it needs to occupy the same space that I currently occupy.
Any physicists out there? You explain to the rest of them what this means.
So, I get up on the curb, damn near wreck into a gaggle of old women, barely recover enough to dodge the folks covering their books from their outdoor book sale (if you ever want to guarantee rain, have a book shop do a sidewalk sale; more effective than a whole nation of rain dancers). I swear, all I needed was two guys carrying a pane of glass. Or maybe a fruit vendor carrying a crate of peaches. I then get back out onto the street, where I cut the aforementioned bus off. She then honks her horn at me!
I stop my bike in the middle of the street and call Pace and tell them that the driver of said bus very nearly hit me on my bicycle and she now has the nerve to honk at me.
They’re sending me paperwork that I have to fill out.
Just what in the hell is happening to mass transit? A fire on the Blue Line and no one knows how to properly evacuate except for some passengers and this driver nearly killing me. Let us not forget that there are unexplained delays and filthy stations, trains and buses. I have a near-collision with buses roughly twice a year. I admit to riding aggressively. I love to go fast and fit where I shouldn’t be able to fit. Besides, I hate my bike, and getting hit means I get a new one for free. But I don’t want to get hit by a bus. How can I enjoy my new bike when I’m in traction?
So, no harm done, I made it home in a hurry. All of that adrenaline took at least five minutes off my usual time, after you subtract the time I spent talking to a bureaucrat about the idiot he entrusted with a bus.

Before nearly becoming the world’s most handsome grease spot, I did a lot of picking things up and putting them down again. As the co-workers refer to it, “boy work.” I like manual labor. It is brainless; the body knows how to pick stuff up, so it just does it. You get an honest sweat going on and you get to philosophize. It turns out that the program I am going to run is going to have a Teen Blog aspect, which I think is super cool, since I just got finished with my preliminary study into the blog in the classroom. I was already psyched about the new job, but now I am super-psyched!

So, what’s for dinner?