Take The Bus And Enjoy All The Fuss

Most days, I ride the bus to work, or, as I prefer to put it, I enjoy the hospitality and ambience of the Spokane Transit Authority.

I do this not because I want to save the planet or anything, although I suppose I am in favor of saving the planet when convenient. I do it because I enjoy riding the bus. I also do it because I have a new car and my payments are so high I can’t afford to actually drive it.

Honestly, I have always liked city buses. It’s such a relaxed way to get to work: You just hop on, read a book, and pretty soon you’re there. My bus ride is about 20 minutes, which means I get 40 minutes a day of reading. At this rate I will complete my lifetime goal of reading the entire 11-volume “Story of Civilization (subtitled: Everything That Has Ever Happened Anywhere)” by the year 2145.

Or it might take longer, because I have also become acquainted with several of my regular bus-mates, and we sometimes spend the entire trip in conversation about such subjects as: the cars we wish we were driving to work.

The bus is an excellent way to meet people. It’s almost like that Hollies’ song “Bus Stop,” where a guy and gal fall in love under an umbrella at the bus stop. I’m not saying that anybody on my bus has actually gotten married, but you never know. Maybe some morning the bus driver will perform a simple little wedding ceremony, just like the captain of a ship.

People say to me, “That’s fine for you, Jim, up there on the white-collar, professional yuppies-with-briefcases South Hill. But I wouldn’t even WANT to know the people on my bus route, assuming of course that I could ever lower myself to actually take it.”

Well, we get a rich mix of humanity on my bus, too. I finally figured out why when I overheard someone on my bus say, “You know what? There are four group homes within two blocks of my house.”

This rich mix doesn’t bother me at all. The vast majority of these people are perfectly civil bus-mates, and when the occasional one in 100 isn’t perfectly civil, that’s OK too. It makes for an especially entertaining bus ride.

One morning, a glowering middle-aged woman got on the bus and immediately began snarling at the bus driver. The driver’s transgression? She required the woman to show her bus pass. Then this aggrieved woman sat down and continued to spew obscenities about. A little old lady put her finger to her lips and said, “Watch your language.”

This set the woman off on an obscene tirade aimed at the little old lady, and pretty soon everybody on the bus was telling this foul-mouthed whiner to stick a cork in it.

“Isn’t this typical?” she sneered back. “This whole city’s out to get me. I’ve been abused, and all Spokane wants to do is harass me.”

“You don’t like it here, move somewhere else,” said someone.

“I did,” said the woman. “It didn’t do any good. Spokane followed me.”

“What?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Spokane followed me. It’s still following me.”

When she finally got off the bus, everyone broke into applause. No one, as far as I could tell, had the slightest interest in following her.

Like I said, I love riding the bus.

But now I’m worried about my bus future. The STA is thinking of drastically revamping the routes so that most people will have to walk farther to their bus stops. The advantage of this is that the bus ride itself won’t take as long because it won’t wind through residential streets picking up annoying passengers such as myself.

To recap: The STA is thinking of improving the bus system to such an extent that my bus stop will be three times farther away.

So, to further recap: They think that I would rather spend 10 extra minutes walking miserably through the blowing snow on a street with no sidewalks instead of spending those 10 minutes on a warm, cozy bus reading my book and talking with my friends.

I have already registered my protest on this issue. I’m beginning to identify with that loudmouthed woman on the bus, except I have the opposite problem.

I’m not worried that Spokane is following me. I’m worried that the Spokane Transit Authority is abandoning me.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review