I don’t like buses at all. Buses and I don’t have a good relationship. I hated riding the yellow school bus as a child, mostly because I hated sitting near a bunch of kids who were too damn noisy for 7am. Also a bunch of kids, especially during fifth and sixth grade, liked to cause other people on the road to have fatal accidents by yelling obscenities out the window and mooning them. I remember one kid once unzipped his school khakis and pissed right out the window. A couple of my school bullies were on the school bus. It was bad enough that I had to go to school but I had to deal with the bullshit politics of the school bus. You couldn’t sit in certain seats because they were reserved for so-and-so. I won’t go into it, nor do I want to. All I will say is every time I see a yellow school bus I cringe and pity the children who are stuck riding them.
I hate CTA buses because they it’s so easy to hate public transit. I believe that public transit gets a bad rap. I’m sure CTA buses wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t suck so much. Buses are either too early or running late. Or a bus will crash on the street. if you miss a bus, then you have to wait anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour for the next one. Trains are not like that. There is always a Red Line train arriving at the Fullerton Stop at least every ten minutes all day and night long. Both northbound to the outer edges of the city like Rogers Park and Loyola, and southbound, towards the Loop, the South Side, and whatever the hell is at 95th and the Dan Ryan. Public transit overseas is much better than the crap we’re stuck with for our commute.
I’m sure the people in charge of the CTA are doing the best they can with the limited amount of resources they have and the state and federal government is unable to provide any more support. But I still don’t understand how they are millions and millions in debt year after year. And this is after they end up cutting services and laying off employees. Every so often, we hear about their Doomsday plan, which sounds more like a cartoon villain will take over the CTA and crash all the trains and buses into one giant pile in the middle of the city and break out into potentially cool yet ridiculous laughter. I think we should fire the people in charge of running the budget into the red, like the CEO, CFO, and whatever overpaid positions they make up and hide behind. The only thing that bothers me more than the overpaid bureaucrats of the CTA is that one of them is now in charge of the Chicago Public Schools system. You have a man who was unable to run busses and trains in charge of running the educational system of one of the largest cities in the country.
The worst bus system I have ever encountered is American Coach. This is the bus system that Walt Disney World used to shuffle its college interns around from the parks to their condo apartments back when I was an intern there in the spring of ’08. Those buses were so shitty. They were never on time. Half the drivers were assholes. And the buses never took us to any cool places. They only took us to the three apartment complexes we resided in, the four parks where we worked, one super Wal-Mart somewhere in Kalazamkoo or whatever the name of the town that was down the road, and some mall that no one went to because we couldn’t either find the time or the money to go there. I had never wanted to own a car more in my whole life than when I was living down there. One of the first things people do when they move down there is to befriend someone who had a car and could take you places. Almost everyone had at least one roommate who had a car, so this was fairly easy to accomplish. All you had to do was to develop a friendship, or at the very least, not hate your roommate.
The buses in Mexico are the most interesting ones to ride. In the capital and most large cities, all the buses are under one organized mass transit system, like CTA. In other parts of the country, like in smaller cities, Acapulco and other tourist traps, it seems like anyone can buy or lease a bus or something that resembles a bus, charge fare, and you’re in business. I’ve seen people board those old Volkswagen vans at bus stops. (Also, while they were designated bus stops created, zoned, and built by the city, buses would stop anywhere.) I remember my dad always asking before we boarded a bus how much the fare was. The fare was similar on most buses but there was no universal amount. One bus could charge five pesos and the next bus could charge ten pesos. Some buses would be air-conditioned and some buses had the windows permanently open so passengers could get a breeze during the unforgiving humidity they were trapped in. I remember one or two buses that actually have lawn chairs for seats. Lawn chairs. Those were the ones that would charge five pesos. If you wanted to sit on a regular and safe seat, then you were willing to shell out ten pesos. Those buses also have air-conditioning and a working radio.
Right now I am riding on a Megabus. I am visiting some friends downstate for the weekend. In the past I always traveled by train. I love the train. Its a smooth ride, its fast, plus if you’re lucky, you get to steal someone’s wi-fi and charge your phone and laptop thanks to electrical outlets that run on the side of the train right underneath the window. I like those trains, especially the double-deckers with the bar, café, and the lounge with the chairs that go round-and-round and the glass ceiling.
Rachel recommended Megabus to me. I was skeptical but I told her that I would think about it. Ten seconds after I told her this, I looked at departure dates and times at Amtrak.com. It turned out that Amtrak prices had gone up. Also, the train would not take me all the way to my desired destination. Every train I looked at would only take me as far as Springfield, which is halfway. From there, I would have to board a bus (a Greyhound bus! Ewww!) that would eventually take me to my location. After looking at airfare, I gave in and bought a round-trip bus ticket on the Megabus.
The megabus is not that bad. I was expecting it to be tacky, maybe even terrible. But so far, this megabus has been good. Its a double-decker, which is neat because double-decker buses are better than single deck buses (see the double-deckers in London. Those are the only buses that i would be willing to board.) The bus driver is funny and says things like “We got only 15 minutes (for the pit stop). I’m leaving at 8:15 sharp. Please come back ‘cuz if you call customer service, the first thing they’ll tell you is that I don’t come back to pick up anybody.” I have a row to myself, which is great because these seats are small. I hope I have a row to myself on the bus ride back.
I still don’t like buses. I mean, I was looking at airfare before I settled to ride the Megabus. I would rather spend more money to fly than go cheap and ride a bus across miles and miles of cornfields, faceless suburbia sprawls, and forests. But I don’t have the money to go all out for a plane ticket at the moment. I am a recently unemployed college student for chrissakes. For now, I have this double-decker Megabus with the funny bus driver. I hope we don’t hit a deer because that would be horrible. I have to meet Rachel and Danny in 90 minutes. This bus has to be on time.
From yours truly,
Eddie
From yours truly,
Eddie
AFTER-NOTE: The bus arrived at Union Station in St Louis five minutes ahead of schedule. Rachel and Danny arrived fifteen minutes behind schedule. They made amends by letting me DJ on the drive to a place called Shenanigan’s, where I drank some bitter-tasting beer from a plastic pitcher that I wanted to take home.
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