For Brittney

I decided to write a blog about my adventures on Sun Tran, the city bus in Tucson. I started riding the city bus to and from work last August for several reasons:

• A parking pass at the University is somewhere around $600 - no thank you. 
• I live a little bit too far away from work to bike, which I used to do.
• I've never been a commuter and frankly I don't like to start my day stressed out by traffic, or end it that way for that matter.
• And of course wear and tear on my car, carbon footprint, yadda yadda.  

I finally started this blog, a semester after I started riding the bus, specifically for my friend Brittney. I told her I was going to start it to keep her entertained, or at least something to look at because I really can't promise that this blog will entertain, but I can promise the real people of Tucson, Arizona. 

The format of this blog? Whatever I feel like, gosh. But mostly the people on the bus, my neighborhood and perhaps my playlist since I usually put on my iPod and stare out the window in hopes of avoiding some of the strange conversations that sometimes occur.

Oh and this blog is titled after one of my favorite Violent Femmes songs, "Waiting For the Bus." Take a gander, it's a good one... 

A little glimpse into today's bus ride:

The bus was super crowded and I didn't grab the handle in time when the bus took off, so I crashed into the people behind me and stepped on someone's toe, yelled sorry, then felt like an idiot for the rest of the ride. 

I could eventually scoot further back so I could lean up against something. The girl next to me had on a sweet yellow pleather jacket and was singing out loud to her phone/mp3 player. I glanced over and the background of her phone was a picture of herself laying on a bed looking provocative, yes her own phone's background. But what really got me was her fingernails. They were those super long fake ones with swirlys and a bunch of jewels on them. Gawd awful. I found a replica:

She was pretty fun to watch but what really interested me was the shaven bald head with an X scar on the back of it. When they do scull surgery, do they ever make an X? When he turned to get off the bus, he had a few more scars on his face so I thought it probably wasn't surgery... 

 

When I get off the bus I have to cross a really busy street. There is a bus stop on each side of the road, so it isn't uncommon seeing people cross there. As I was waiting for traffic to clear, I see a guy start running across from the other side. I think he is cutting it close until he loses his hat in the middle of the street with traffic coming at 40 mph plus. I gasp, half scream as the cars slam on their brakes. He makes it across alive, but heard me gasp and smiled at me when I had stopped walking and had my hand covering my mouth. I thought I was going to witness a ped death, and he thought it was funny. 

Oh Tucson.