h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Did I ever mention that there seems to be an entire section of the Austin population who seem to spend their time walking the streets and getting on/off buses on a whim, or just because there's a bus there? Case in point...

This morning I caught the bus to work at a little after 7am. I was the only person at the bus stop. It was only just starting to get light, admittedly, but even in the dark you know when there's someone else there.

When the bus drew up there was no-one else in sight and I got on. I swiped my pass through the reader and made my way to a seat, and then I heard the reader beep, and then it beeped again. Two more people got on after me, but I swear to Bob with my hand on my heart there was no-one else at the bus stop!

And then, oh my goodness, one of them got off at the very next stop and started walking back in the direction of the bus stop we'd just left!!!

You know, despite all my complaining and deriding of the service, I think Cap Metro must really like me, because on my way home tonight neither driver of the two buses I took wanted to let me off their bus. On the first one I had to shout 'BACK DOOR' three times while he was letting people off at the front, closing the doors and getting ready to pull away. The second driver didn't even want to slow down at my stop, despite me having rung the bell.

It's so nice to feel wanted, isn't it

Oh my!

Just what I need on a Saturday night with a tight window to my connection and if I miss it I've got a 30-minute wait for the next one.

A trainee driver

(Only just made the transfer).

This might make you feel just a wee bit better about your vehicle free choice.

Jason Drives the World's Worst Car [NSFW:L]

http://youtu.be/Y16ObVRvgOE

I dunno. After tonight's journey home even that looks appealing

I thought my weekend journeys to work were going to be so peaceful and restful and relaxing. After all, who gets up to take the bus at 7am on a Saturday and a Sunday morning, especially in a town with a reputation for slacking like Austin.

The 24 carat, solid gold, diamond studded, weapons grade bellends, that's who. Like the muppet who got on my bus this morning.

First thing he does is walk past the driver and put his stuff down on a seat. Then he walks back to pay his fare, casually leaning against the rail below the windscreen. He spends a full minute discussing something with the driver (I don't know what, I keep my earbuds firmly shoved in during every bus journey). Then he swipes his bus pass. It's no good. He puts it on top of the farebox and tries another. Also no good. And a third, and a fourth. More discussion.

By now we've been at the stop for more than two minutes. He and the driver continue talking for another minute or more. It was at this point that I took my earbuds out and shouted from the back of the bus "Can we go please? Some of us are trying to get to work on time!!!"

Might as well have wasted my breath because we were there for another minute.

And wouldn't you know it - the moment the driver shuts the doors and starts to pull away (I don't think he'd actually paid any bus fare at this point), two people come running up and banging on the door to be let in

He got off five or six stops later. It took him at least a minute to do that, talking to the driver while standing in the door so she couldn't shut them.

While this might be one of the most extreme examples of selfishness and ignorance I've experienced on Austin's buses, it's by no means unusual.

is simply not strong enough for how I feel.

We need a smiley. is close.

A head with a mushroom cloud above it would just about fit my mood when I got off that bus.

One thing I haven't mentioned in the glare of this bloke's sheer lack of concern for anyone but himself is the two people who got on as we were trying to get away. It's 7.15 on a Sunday morning. The buses run once an hour at that time of day. We were held up for almost five minutes by bollockbrain, so why were they running for a bus that should have left four minutes previously, and there isn't another one for 55 minutes?

This is also not unusual, by the way.

Not exactly a commuter tale, but certainly a tale of the buses and the bussing bussers who bussing well write the timetables.

It's my Saturday and I've been invited to a rather posh beer dinner on the other side of town. This is bad timing, because if it had been on a workday it would have been a very short and easy bus ride. So I've just spent the past half hour or more figuring out how to get there, and my conclusion is like that old Irish adage 'Well, I if I was going there I wouldn't start from here'

I've found three different bus routes that can get me to where I need to be, but none of them run anywhere near Castle Gosho so I'd have to catch another bus from here first. Can I get an easy connection? Well, in one instance yes, because the first of the two buses I'd take for that journey is one of the two I normally take to work and it runs every 15 minutes between 7am and 7pm. But of the three ways of getting to my destination this one's by far the longest - an hour and a half (and it's not like you can say that it takes the scenic route). In a car it'd take less than 30 minutes.

The other two possible journeys both also involve connections (some say transfers) and would take about an hour if the transfers were timely, but in both cases the bus I take first is scheduled to arrive at the stop where I make my transfer either just after, or a few minutes before the second bus leaves (in this town you don't have anything to do with a transfer window of less than ten minutes, and even that's pushing it on some routes), and one or both of the buses I'd need to catch on this journey runs more than 30 minutes apart.

This is not unusual.

On a positive note, both morning journeys to work this weekend were virtually stress-free. This is *very* unusual. I'm putting it down to the torrential rain keeping the bellends and nobheads away from the rest of us decent folk.

I've just found a fourth route. The first bus leaves from right outside Castle Gosho It gets to the transfer stop at 4.58. The bus I need to transfer to leaves at 4.55 Both buses run every 35 minutes

Did I mention this is not unusual?

Just because I haven't posted anything here recently doesn't mean that each day's journey to or from work hasn't been a pain, it simply means that saying the same thing day after day after day would be exceedingly repetitive. But today's level of stupid was unusually high.

It began this morning. Thursdays are usually pretty bad - often more than so than Monday morning. A friend who also uses the buses to get to work and with whom I share these stories (and he shares his with me) has suggested it's because Austin, being slackertown, works a four-day week, and I'm inclined to agree with him because Friday morning journeys to work are invariably as smooth as silk (Friday afternoons less so - I think everyone's out shopping at that big supermarket along the route).

The first part of my journey was easy enough but the second bus showed up nearly 10 minutes late (a bus that's supposed to run every 15 minutes). Oh well, I should just about get to work on time if it doesn't get progressively later as we progress. Which it always does

About halfway along the journey a kid gets on. At this particular stop you can see the bus coming from half a mile away, but that wasn't enough time for him to start thinking about getting his money out - he got on the bus, walked past the driver and started fumbling around in his pockets. We waited half a minute for him to find his cash, which turned out to be a $10 bill that he started waving around at the rest of us to see if anyone could change it for smaller bills Which somebody eventually did, from all the way at the back of the bus.

Now though, we're on the move and the driver won't let him cross that yellow line on the floor where you're not supposed to stand when the bus is in motion. So having held up the bus at one stop we now have to wait for him to hold the bus up at the next stop while he tries to get his new found bills into the reader

Two stops later he rings the bell The driver stops, but he decides he actually wants the next one This particular stop is right at a junction, and as we're about to pull away the light goes red, and as it does so a third bus which I sometimes hop on (because it takes a slightly shorter route to my workplace) pulls out of the cross street. If he hadn't rang the bell we'd now be in front of that bus and I'd be able to catch it Oh well, if we pull up behind it at one of the three or four stop we share before it turns into a side street I might be able to run off this one and catch it.

The driver pulls in at the next stop, the one young fellow-me-lad said he wanted, if you remember... nope, he doesn't want that one either. In fact he goes two more stops before getting off, by which time that other bus is long gone from my grasp

There weren't any such bozos on the way home tonight, just an unusually high number of incredibly annoying types - ADD kids, ADD adults, people who wait until they stand in front of the driver before they get their pass out, people who ring the bell just before the bus gets to the stop, people who ring the bell before the stop they actually want, and one woman who, when the driver got out of her seat to find something in her coat, got off the bus at the middle doors and walked straight back on at the front

I will to remember never to drive a Hoffmann .

I had a virtually identical experience on Friday morning Not with the same bloke, but with other, equally ignorant numpties.

And it's Monday morning so I expect a three-peat

The law of probabilities was with me this morning - there was no three-peat in fact quite the opposite. For the second Monday in a row I had a smooth and (relatively) stress-free journey to work. Not only was the bus not late getting me here, it was actually early!

Cap Metro will forever confound me.

Non confundar

And I also had an unbelievably easy ride home too, including a driver who actually waited for people on the bus that pulled up behind it at the stop where I transfer, to get off that bus and onto hers.

Including me.

*Faints* ::THUD:: ©®

[Sends ]

I've just seen the mugshot of the toerag who killed three people at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood yesterday http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1637B/production/_86930019_773e8f9f-c5dd-455f-a27e-8a903aaa18ad.jpg

He looks like so many of the people I share my journey to and from work on the bus with