Tag: CDTA

Once, and other thoughts

ROGER will provide.

once-musicalThe musical Once was playing at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady in May. The Wife and I got into our seats about 20 minutes before the 7:30 opening. Already there were a bunch of people, some singing and playing instruments, but others just milling around.

We ascertained from another patron that the audience members could go up on stage and hang out or even buy a drink at the bar. Why we didn’t I’m not sure, other than the desire not to climb over people to get in and out of our seats. But it was very cool to watch.

Then the audience members leave the stage, but the music continues. One man sings a solo. The house lights are still on. Then Guy (that’s the name of one of the characters) sings the first song from the show as the house lights begin to dim but not so much because Girl (the other main character) has to walk down one of the aisles to walk up the steps to the front of the stage.

I saw the movie Once, and I recall enjoying it. This iteration is somewhat funnier, especially the banter between Girl and Guy early on. All the other musicians stay on stage, taking on various roles, moving sets, and singing. The large mirror on the set was used to great effect.

It was such a wonderfully organic production that I may have failed to mention that it was very good. A review.

Bus hallelujah

I was riding the bus to work; the weather was messy. A guy gets on the bus, known to some of the other patrons, but not by me. He said he had lent his wife his bus pass. I used my 10-ride card to pay for his ride. Immediately, two or three of these women went “God is good!” and “God will provide.”

(When I told the story to a colleague, he said, “ROGER will provide.” I laughed.)

Later on the trip, after the man had departed, these good women were trash-talking about someone, not on the bus, with at least one of them using all sorts of four-letter words to describe the woman in question. It was quite surreal.

Hillary can’t be President

Apparently, there are people out there who believe that a woman cannot legally be President of the United States. This is because Article II of the U.S. Constitution begins: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected…”

I’d ignore this as linguistic silliness, except after the birther attacks on Barack Obama, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone decided to make a legal case on this issue, as, in fact, someone tried and failed to do in 2008, the last time the former Secretary of State ran for POTUS.

One fellow has been badgering a local journalist about this topic, publicly on Facebook, concerned and frustrated that the mainstream media is ignoring this “important” issue.

And

*When my family rode our bikes home from the Pinksterfest on May 7, even as cars were stuck in gridlock, one of my church friends accused us of “gloating.” Untrue at the time. But after getting that reaction…

*When signaling about a potential poker game by email, someone wrote: “There will be lectures from Dr. Card on ‘Probability Theory and its Effect on Personal Finances and the Preservation of Quality of Life.'”

*Prince’s “Nothing Compares With You” was on the May 5 episode of the TV show Grey Anatomy, which I thought was amazingly quick, given the fact that he died on April 21. I imagine something was booted.

“TMI, mommy!”

“Mommy, everybody on the bus can hear you!”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

As someone who takes the bus at least part of the way to work most days, I am regularly reminded why I hate listening to other people’s cellphone conversations, and why some public conveyances thankfully ban the use of those contraptions.

I’m sitting across a woman and her daughter, about ten, give or take a year, on the CDTA (local) bus. The mom is on the phone talking to her friend, and I’m not paying attention, until she says: “Do you know what I really hate about Eddie*? He comes into the bathroom when I’m trying to pee and s###!” Then she goes on about how, when she closes the bathroom door, he pounds on the door and demands to know what she’s doing in there. And she repeats her intentions.

At this point, the daughter says, “TMI, mommy!” She actually used the initials, rather than “too much information.” But either the mom doesn’t hear her or feels the need to continue with this important telephonic conversation.

The girl is sitting right across from me and looks at me with this exasperated gaze. I give her the “what can you do?” shrug. She says a little louder, “Mommy, everybody on the bus can hear you!” This was probably true.

But the mom continues. She said, on her phone, just before I got off, “You know, we were going to get married today. Well, THAT’S off!” And I know TMI, so I nod affirmatively to myself.
***
Sidebar: I went to the Tulip Festival on Mother’s Day weekend. As soon as he sees me, the guy at the CDTA booth immediately knows me by name. The one thing he noted is that, in my LAST blog post about CDTA, I mentioned a crazy woman on board. I’m sure he’ll love this one as well.

*Not his real name.
Thanks, XKCD

Strange ride on the CDTA 905

She sat on an aisle seat, on the left side, and started leaned so far to her right, I thought she’d surely fall over.

BusPlusIn mid-January, it’s the Thursday afternoon matinee of the play War Horse I need to get to at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. I hop on the 905, that limited-stop red Bus Plus, at Washington and Lark in Albany at 11:39 a.m., right on time, and it should get me around Nott Terrace at 12:24, more than an hour before the play.

It would have except for that young woman. I had a difficult time gauging her age, though in the 18 to 25 range was most likely. She was sitting in the first set of seats. Well, sitting might have been overstating it, for she was slouching lower and lower, and I thought her head would hit the ground. As it was, she knocked over a large cup of milk from Stewart’s that spread back three rows of seats.

I moved across from her and she woke up to say she was fine. But this conversation must have triggered, for he stopped the bus a short time later (at the WAMC stop).

Driver: I didn’t let you on to throw your drink all over the floor.
Young Woman: I didn’t THROW it, it spilled.
D: And you’ve done this before.
YW: So why did you let me on the bus?

It went on like that, with a couple of passengers pleading with the driver to get going before he ordered her to sit further back on the bus. He probably figured she’d rest in some window seat. Instead, she sat on an aisle seat, on the left side, and started leaned so far to her right, I thought she’d surely fall over. Instead, she’d regained awareness.

Some guy who was sitting in front of her was going to take her picture, I suspect to verify her condition. She was aware enough of him, though, to suggest that if he did take her picture, she would report him as a “sex pervert.”

She’d nod off, leaning, and dropped her phone or another device twice onto the floor. Then she’d be lucid enough to engage in pleasant banter with the folks in the back of the bus. Then she’d zone out and dropped her wallet twice, the second time, with her cards falling out. She bent over and was fodder for much laughter. I don’t know if she realized they were laughing AT her rather than WITH her.

At some point, a guy got off the bus, but before he left, leaned over her slumped body, then left. A minute or two later, she says she had been robbed. She may well have, but I was too far up front to tell for sure.

The driver stopped the bus across from the McDonald’s on State Street in Schenectady, calls his dispatcher, and we wait, much to the furor of more than a few riders. Then she says that she WASN’T robbed, at which point I swear there were those who seemed ready to do the young woman bodily harm. Several riders plead with the driver to go. She leaves the bus and goes to the Mickey D’s, with the riders more impatient by the minute. Then she comes back because she had left a large bag by her original seat on the bus.

By this point, the police fortunately arrive, we’re allowed to go, and I’m only 15 minutes late.

Was the young woman on drugs, prescription or otherwise? Did she have narcolepsy? I don’t know. Nor do I know whether a guy who said he was going to post a video of her on Facebook actually did, but he, who was sitting behind her, did record her for several minutes.

Talk about a long, strange trip…

Getting to Work Has Just Gotten Tougher

The Capital District Transportation Authority, the bus service for the Albany/Schenectady/Troy, NY area, has instituted a major revamping of its buses in Albany. It’s not just changing a few schedules, it’s dropping some buses and adding others.

For me, taking the bus to church has gotten easier when we have an early service; the first bus is now 8:04 rather than 8:52.

On the other hand, getting to work, starting tomorrow, has gotten a whole lot more difficult. I pretty much laid it out here. There might be one or two other options, but these involve the daughter leaving for school much earlier than has been her habit.

The other fact is that the bus to Corporate Woods won’t be going by my building, but rather I have to walk down this curvy road in the morning, and, worse, walk up this curvy road, where vehicles go terribly fast, at night, with no sidewalk; when it’s been snowing, that’s potentially dangerous, especially the way the Brinks trucks barrel down that road.

Something else: CDTA has gotten rid of some of the bus stops in order to increase fuel efficiency. One of them is about 20 feet from our front porch. I’ll miss it for nostalgic reasons. When I was taking the Daughter to preschool, we would often run to the stop just ahead of the bus a block away.

Ramblin' with Roger
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