'You're Lucky You have a Bike'
It was 10:30 p.m. I had just finished work in Santa Monica and had been waiting at the bus stop on Broadway and 4th for 20 minutes, for the 720 a 'rapid' bus that runs every 10.
L.A.'s public transportation system is not reliable, that is a fact. Buses are late and may never show up. So I decided to ride my bike over to Wlshire/4th, the bus always stops there.
An excruciating 30 minute wait later, here comes the 20, the turtle, the slow sister line of the 720. So I hop on, glad to finally escape the raging psychopath that had been yelling homophobic rants into the bus-less night.
At this point my phone battery is dying, so my hopes of habitual, mindless social media, news-reading bus entertainment are pretty much out of the question.
So I decide to indulge in meditation, a slowly advancing practice that I resort to from time to time. By now i have accepted the fact that I might not get home until after midnight, 'that's fine'.
3.5 Miles into this bus ride, the driver yells 'Whoa, whoa, whoa!' and the bus stops abruptly at a green light. 'I'm driving a bus!' he yells, at the unfortunate driver in front of our bus, whose axle had just given out at the very middle of the intersection and was asking the bus driver to back up. People start buzzing and asking 'what's up?', people are bummed out. The driver in front of us is stuck and our bus can't pass him as there is a trailer holding a 'DETOUR' sign directly to our left.
We are stranded, the broken car blocking us cannot be pushed due to the broken axle, so two girls hop out of the bus and attempt to move the detour sign, 'It's too heavy' one of them yells, as I demount my bike from the front of the bus and decide to skedaddle the fuck out of this mess.
'You're lucky you have a bike' one of the girls says, 'yeah' I mutter, regretting having gotten on this wicked bus in the first place.
So I ride off, with a backpack full of heavy Kombucha drinks and decide to finish my commute, powered by own two legs, filled with a sudden gratitude for my beautiful vintage Peugeot bike 'Dominique', my health and my unwillingness to feel defeated by the lack of a car in this vast city.
On the ride home, I passed many bus stops filled with unknowing commuters, who may have been waiting close to an hour, for a bus that is stranded behind a broken car.
So, 'fuck yeah!', I am lucky to have a bike, and I am grateful to be able to ride it 15 miles to work, and a blissful 15 miles back when shit on the bus goes awry.