For a variety of reasons, I was not able to bike to work the other day.\u00a0 I took the bus.<\/p>\n
Now, my bus route, which basically gives me door to door service, isn’t by any means the dodgiest route in town.\u00a0 But every once in a while, let’s just say I wish parking were cheaper.<\/p>\n
I was sitting on the bus.\u00a0 One other person was on the bus, sitting probably six rows behind me.\u00a0 The bus has a capacity of about 40, if every seat is full.\u00a0 I was sitting across the seat – because at 6’5, sitting fore-and-aft leaves my knees jammed against the seat in front of me.<\/p>\n
A woman – sixtysomething, gray hair, with that frantic manner and the thousand-yard glare of the emotionally-challenged, got on the bus and clumped down the aisle.<\/p>\n
And sat down next to me, as I scrambled to pull my knees out of the way.<\/p>\n
“Some people are so rude”, she said, loudly enough for the whole bus to hear, not that they cared, as I wedged my knees into place.\u00a0\u00a0 She bustled herself into place, muttering, again, about how rude I was.<\/p>\n
I turned toward the window, and coughed a long, dry, hacking cough that sounded like it threatened to bring up breakfast.\u00a0 And then another.\u00a0 And then another.<\/p>\n
She stopped muttering.<\/p>\n
I dialed a number on my cell phone (my home number), and started conversing with the voicemail; “Hey.\u00a0 Yeah, I’m on the bus.\u00a0 Oh, I think my fever might get down <\/em>to 101, but I gotta work.\u00a0 Yeah, I’m short already this week.”<\/p>\n The lady was listening.<\/p>\n ”\u00a0 Oh, I was up puking all night.\u00a0 Coulda swore I saw blood…”<\/p>\n She moved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a variety of reasons, I was not able to bike to work the other day.\u00a0 I took the bus. Now, my bus route, which basically gives me door to door service, isn’t by any means the dodgiest route in town.\u00a0 But every once in a while, let’s just say I wish parking were cheaper. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11089"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11092,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089\/revisions\/11092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}