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

He looks a little bit like P.Q.Q. Bach, though apparently not as harmless.

Tonight's journey home was undoubtedly one of the most hellish I've experienced in a long time. In the space of (what should have been) a 20-minute journey we got everything from the plain bog-standard verbal diarrhoea to the shouting incoherently at no-one in particular; we got the shouting into a cellphone; no-one getting on the bus (and several of the people getting off) had no idea where they were going or how to get there and spent at least a minute discussing their itinerary with the driver; half the people getting on seemed to have no idea how to pay a bus fare, or that they actually had to pay a bus fare at all; at one point I had a dirty, smelly foot mere inches from my face; and the driver decided that the interior lights should be full-on for the entire journey

My biggest complaints of late have been with the massive amounts of road reconstruction going on. The other night, around 9:00 p.m., I was coming home from the movie theater, and kept being shunted into detours until I had no idea where I was, nor how I would get home. I realize that traffic is too heavy for that kind of work during daylight hours, but I can only hope that the other drivers weren't through-travelers who had no clue where the back roads they were diverted to went. They would have gotten more irretrievably lost than I was, since I eventually found familiar streets again.

Last night's journey home was one which book-ended my shortened my working week, because I never got around to recording Friday morning's journey.

Being the day after Thanksgiving, and plenty of people having the day off (schools were closed), the journey was as quiet as a Saturday (in fact, the buses were running a Saturday service). When I got on the bus, my fellow passengers were a pair of zonked-out space cadets on the back seat who largely talking gibberish, and a bloke a few seats in front of me who was constantly rocking back and forth, wring his hands (or rather, his wrists) and who had a rictus grin that would have put the Cheshire cat to shame.

A few stops later another bloke got on with his arse actually - not literally or figuratively - actually hanging out of his trousers

How do Texans feel about being called blokes?

[Assuming that you are still in Texas]

Most of the ones on the buses are so high on drugs, whether prescribed or medicinal, or so far off their meds that I doubt they'd even know if someone called them that, Paul.

That bad, eh?

I never could quite figure out the Texas mindset. It's lucky for me that I was able to avoid finding myself in Texas. I've heard that they have some supermarkets there that are massive, with products of a bewildering variety . Texas does not shrink from the challenges of doing things on a grand scale.

Yes. We have HISTORICALLY vast grocery stores.


[WARNING: Auto play video]

http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/

Oh Cap Metro, you are so adept at screwing up whatever plans I make for any kind of travel around this town.

There's a supermarket in Austin (and around Texas) that's known for selling a halfway decent range of international food (it's the one beginning with 'F', BG). They have two branches in Austin, one of which is a fairly simple journey on the bus, the other is bit more complicated because of the awkward walk from the bus stop to the store, and slightly more awkward walk back.

I've been to the latter. Today I decided that I may as well check out the former, which I haven' tried yet. It's a one-bus journey and the walk from and to the bus stop is easier. Even though that particular bus runs about every 35 minutes it should be a doddle, right? Well it would be, if the timing of the return bus meant that I have two choices:

1 Run in there; hopefully find what I want straight away (some nice choccies for Christmas, Quality Street if they've got em, and a few everyday bits and pieces such as Bisto powder), bearing in mind I haven't been there before and don't know the layout of the place (it's BIG); hope that there's no queues at the checkout; and run back out again, all in the space of 15 minutes.

2. Spend almost an hour in the place and get the next bus.

The first option assumes that the bus getting me there is on time, which is never a certainty with that route. The second option means I'll be killing time for about 45 minutes.

Sigh.

I think I've calmed down enough now to relate the tale of Sunday's journey home. To paint in a little background - Saturday's journey home also involved a missed transfer, but the buses are rather more frequent so it was only very annoying, but it exacerbated Sunday's trip.

Throughout Sunday afternoon the bus I pick up at work arrives at the stop where I connect with bus home five minutes after that one leaves, and that runs every 30 minutes so it means a 25 minute wait for the next one. Until, that is, 5.30, when there's only a 12-minute wait for the second bus. A thin margin for making a transfer on Cap Metro, but it's worked for me every week so far. Until now.

The first bus picked me about four minutes late. Not too much of a worry - the traffic's not too bad at that time of the week and we're unlikely to get held up.

Except, that is, by a full-on Mexican funeral procession

Now we're six minutes late. Getting concerned, but still not a disaster. Except we have a wheelchair passenger on board, and the bloke is either blind drunk, on medication, stoned out of his tree, or not quite the full shilling. He doesn't know where he is or where he's going.

We get to that certain stop about halfway along the journey which I've spoken about many times - the one on a corner where a lot of bums, hobos, crackheads and crazies hang out under the bus shelters. Two more wheelchair passengers want to get on, but there's only space for two on the bus and one's already taken, so one of them gets on.

It's at this point in the journey that, after having spent a couple of minutes strapping the new wheelchair in, the driver gets back in his seat... and we wait there... and we wait there... and we wait there... FOR NO APPARENT REASON!

Long story short, wheelchair one gets off three stops later (takes a couple of minutes), wheelchair two gets off four stops after that (another couple of minutes). I miss my transfer by...

One minute And it's a 29 minute wait for the next one

I haven't been that for a long, long time. And when it arrives and I get on and greet the driver with a friendly 'Hello' (after all, it wasn't her fault I'm still at the damn bus stop), she completely blanks me out

I'll be honest; up to that point I was merely seething with anger, but it wasn't directed specifically at Cap Metro, although had the driver not waited those four minutes after the second wheelchair got on I would have made my second bus. It has to be said that probably 90% of the delays on the buses in Austin are because of the clueless passengers. But after that second driver ignored me I decided that I was going to let CM have it with both barrels. Which I did yesterday in an email.

Not that it'll do any good

Now I've made myself again

Five glorious days of no buses Kind of scuppered myself by getting a monthly pass, didn't I. I could have saved myself some wedge by getting daily passes on the bus, or maybe a little more by getting a couple of seven-day passes

Do you not need buses for getting groceries when you aren't working?

Depends whether I go to the supermarket or the co-op, and I can walk to the supermarket if I've a mind to.

The walk *to* the supermarket is not as strenuous as the walk *from* the supermarket.

"Morons. I've got morons on my team. Nobody is going to rob us going down the mountain. We have got no money going down the mountain. When we have got the money, on the way back, then you can sweat." - Struther Martin in _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_.

This is one of the funniest things I've read in ages http://www.capmetro.org/rules/

Let's take "Have your pass or cash ready when boarding" for instance. I wouldn't say that more than half of the bus passengers in Austin do that. Case in point:

Coming home Sunday evening, we get to one stop where two people are waiting. One has a bike - he starts putting it on the rack while the other one gets on. She takes 20-30 seconds to find her purse and take out two dollar bills, which she puts into the reader (another 20-30 seconds each bill because those things are as useless as a ), then she stands there waiting, apparently for a transfer. We haven't had transfers (tickets that last an hour or 90 minutes and allow you to take a second bus free until it expires) on Cap Metro buses for about ten years.

By now the bloke with the bike has finished putting it on the rack and is waiting behind her.

The driver explains to her that she'll need to get a day pass, and there's more to-ing and fro-ing as he explains that it's $2.50, so now she's got to find more money, and she doesn't have any change so we wait while she puts (or rather, attempts to put) another dollar bill into the reader. She gets her pass and walks off to find a seat.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that after standing behind her for more than a minute, that the bloke with the bike would have got his fare out by now and have it ready.

Oh, you're so naive

No, he puts down his bag and starts fumbling around in his pockets It takes him a full two minutes to find his wallet, pull out his reduced fare card which he touches to the reader, then put that back in his wallet, then get his money out and pay his fare, then put his wallet back in his coat, then pick up his bag and walk to the back of the bus and sit down (we had one of those drivers who won't move the bus an angstrom until the last passenger is settled on a seat).

So, two people getting on the bus; total time spent at one bus stop - five minutes And I have a wafer-thin margin between this bus and the bus I need to transfer to to get home, and it's Sunday and that second bus only runs every half an hour and it's BLOODY FREEZING!!!

I caught my second bus, just.

Five minutes? That's about how long it takes for wheelchair-bound passengers to be rolled up the special ramp and tied into place on the bus. I've seen such passengers get on, ride two stops, and then get off again.

But that's totally legitimate, and I hope it will work for me if I ever have to get around in wheelchairs.

I have a theory that on very cold days the cells in one's brain and hands slow down a lot. This would explain taking so long to fish one's wallet out of a pocket and get it open. Likewise, realizing the need to get fare money ready.

Sorry that you had to worry so much about making your connection.

"Riders"???????????

What's wrong with "passengers"?