I catch the No. 6 bus to work in the afternoon on weekdays and ride it south on MLK, over the Hawthorne Bridge and into downtown Portland, where I get off on Southwest Third Avenue. After work, at night, I wait at a poorly lit stop in the Park Blocks on Columbia until the bus picks me up and deposits me near a Popeyes chicken restaurant in Eliot, the Northeast Portland neighborhood where I live. The commute is about three miles each way.
I ride the bus for the wrong reasons.
I don't ride the bus to save the environment, although by using mass transit I help reduce pollution and the use of fossil fuels and gasoline (now above $4 a gallon). Plus, the city buses run on biodiesel, a fuel made out of what used to be the cooking medium for some poor soul's Chicken McNuggets.
I don't ride the bus to save time. When I drove, it took me five minutes each way to my work (which shall remain unnamed) --a straight shot over the Fremont Bridge and onto I-405 through downtown. No problem. But on the bus, my ride is usually 30 minutes each way, provided nothing goes down to slow it up. And on this line, shit can go down at any given moment.
No, I ride the bus because about a year ago, sadly, the hotel lot where I secretly, shamelessly, flagrantly parked for free for two years came under new ownership, and the new owners caught on to my game pretty quick. And parking downtown is pretty expensive, at a minimum for me at that time about $5 a day. So over the course of two years I saved--well, a lot of money. The point is, I got one over on the Man--the hotel space was empty, so why not use it?
I didn't want to pay to park downtown--parking prices kept going up. Plus it sucked trying to find parking amid the constant construction that is still going on right now. Then my work offered employees a new program that lets us buy bus passes before the tax is taken out of our checks. So I bit. A lot of us bit.
So I'm busing it. I share space in a box every day with strangers, other sentient beings, who, as the Buddhists say, have the potential to repel me, attract me or completely escape my radar.
I ride the bus for the wrong reasons.
I don't ride the bus to save the environment, although by using mass transit I help reduce pollution and the use of fossil fuels and gasoline (now above $4 a gallon). Plus, the city buses run on biodiesel, a fuel made out of what used to be the cooking medium for some poor soul's Chicken McNuggets.
I don't ride the bus to save time. When I drove, it took me five minutes each way to my work (which shall remain unnamed) --a straight shot over the Fremont Bridge and onto I-405 through downtown. No problem. But on the bus, my ride is usually 30 minutes each way, provided nothing goes down to slow it up. And on this line, shit can go down at any given moment.
No, I ride the bus because about a year ago, sadly, the hotel lot where I secretly, shamelessly, flagrantly parked for free for two years came under new ownership, and the new owners caught on to my game pretty quick. And parking downtown is pretty expensive, at a minimum for me at that time about $5 a day. So over the course of two years I saved--well, a lot of money. The point is, I got one over on the Man--the hotel space was empty, so why not use it?
I didn't want to pay to park downtown--parking prices kept going up. Plus it sucked trying to find parking amid the constant construction that is still going on right now. Then my work offered employees a new program that lets us buy bus passes before the tax is taken out of our checks. So I bit. A lot of us bit.
So I'm busing it. I share space in a box every day with strangers, other sentient beings, who, as the Buddhists say, have the potential to repel me, attract me or completely escape my radar.
My coworkers, friends and I who've gone public transit enjoy swapping bus stories. I'd like to share my stories, and let them share their stories, with you.
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