the path less traveled: the bus

In previous reports, HD described his journey by foot and by bike. In his final installment, Homeless Dave catches the bus and relates his experience to us.


Installment Three: the bus (AATA)

Route 12B--which makes a loop west on Liberty, north along Maple, then
east into downtown again along Miller--offers a stop less than a
minute from my house There's a bus scheduled to service that stop at
5:22pm, which gets me where I'm going by 5:35pm, which is a bit early
to arrive for my 6:00pm appointment. But the next bus doesn't get me
there until a scheduled time of a few minutes after 6:00. My strategy
was to take the earlier bus, hope it was running late (nope, arrived
exactly on time by my watch) and disembark a couple of stops early to
kill off the extra time.

When I climbed aboard, I joined 12 other riders. The early-twenties guy seated across from me had a vinyl record album in a plastic bag sitting on his lap. Through the plastic I could make out the words 'Blue Frog' in the title. A young mother boarded at the stop after mine. She had a little red-haired girl in tow whose job it was to carry the bus pass. On entering the bus, the girl shrieked, "I have it, I have it, I have it" and tried to escape down the aisle before it could be swiped. I was prepared to block the unruly red-head's path if necessary, but the young mom managed to catch up to her and wrestle the pass away. After swiping, the red-head was hoisted by the back of her jacket into her seat. By the time we reached Maple Village, everyone originally on the bus at my stop had gotten off.

I made the return trip was via 12B as well. Routewise, 12A would have been a better choice because I would have been delivered to within a minute of my house. Schedule-wise, I would have had to wait around 50 minutes versus the 20 minutes for the 12B. This meant that I had to disembark at Miller and 7th and walk from Miller down to Liberty on 7th.

On the bus, there was a woman holding a box with a new 13-inch combo TV-VCR unit. I suspect she might have been coming from Big George's.

Along the walking segment of the trip home, at the intersection of
7th and Huron, the street was littered with a strange collection of
stuff. Motorists were just driving around the debris. After snapping
the picture I cleared the street and arranged the items neatly on the
corner.