adventures in mass transit

i may have mentioned this before or you may already know, but i take the bus to work every day except for the rare occasion where i have an errand i must run during the day. i enjoy riding the bus, because i usually get to take a nap, there are some VERY interesting people to observe, i've made a few friends i can chat with when i don't feel like napping, it saves me lots of money, and saves me the stress of rush hour traffic. the thing about mass transit is that while for the most part it's very predictable, there are occasionally little snags. yesterday, we had one of those.

as i headed out the door to the bus stop, i was slapped in the face with the hottest day we've seen so far this year. the type of humid heat that you almost choke on and you certainly swoon from. (i hate extreme temperatures, by the way.) so i stood waiting for the bus in the best patch of shade i could find and focused on reading a few pages of my book so as not to have nothing better to do than interally whine about how freaking hot it was. the bus arrived, and i took my usual place in the back left corner of the bus.

we make a few stops, then get on the interstate to head to the southside--about a 20 mile drive or so. i'm chatting with my bus buds, and all of the sudden i hear this horrible whopping noise (whopwhopwhopwhopwhopwhopwhop), and then the air conditioning cuts off, and then this god awful beeping starts. much like a fire alarm. i look at my friends ray and brian and we all sort of shrug our shoulders, look at the bus driver, and wait for her to stop this madness. well, she doesn't. and then another louder, more rapid beeping alarm begins.

people, this is how we made our trip down the powhite parkway. alarms sounding, no air conditioning, with 95 degree heat. i was not happy. in fact, i was a little worried that the bus was going to blow up or explode or something. i saw one man sitting next to the emergency window test the lever that is labeled "in case of emergency, pull." in the back section, we were joking about how the bus driver could NOT slow down or the bus would explode, a la keanu reeves in "speeed," and heard comments like this coming from the front of the bus, too. and all the while, our bus driver just kept on drivin'.

we got to the first stop on the southside and let the people off there, and luckily the bus did not cut off. the beeping had stopped about 2 minutes before this stop, but as we set off again, the whopping noise returned, then the beeping again.

as i mentioned before, i don't do extreme temperatures, so the heat was making me feel nauseated. and the bus ride ain't smooth, and those freaking alarms were about to make me go crazy. i finally made it to my car, hopped in, got home, and immediately got into less clothes (the summer sweater and pants were not helping matters), flopped into the living room floor and stayed there, spread-eagled, for about an hour.

i leave for the bus again in about 5 minutes, so i am praying that today's ride home will not qualify as an adventure, but will instead be a tranquil, cool voyage... wish me luck.