Adventures in Public Transportation
 

I figure that most of us probably have experienced some weird sh*t while on the train or bus. I've been lucky enough to never have been harassed or made uncomfortable, but I have seen some pretty funny stuff.

Last week I was taking the bus home from work and an older white dude with long hair and a blue suit sat down behind me. I thought he was on the phone at first because he was having a loud one-sided conversation, but he was just talking to himself. He started swearing pretty loudly, then he stood up and said, "I want everyone on this bus to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for their teeth. And that's how I punched Satan in the face." Then he got off the bus.

It was awesome.

Oh, where to begin...

One of my favorites was the time when a guy woke up just as the bus pulled over at a bus stop, and he just looked around with a really confused facial expression, ran off the bus, stopped a few meters outside the bus, and went back on it.

Or the time when I was waiting for the bus at the terminal in the neighboring city, and this old lady walked around shouting to the buses that they couldn't see her, and couldn't hurt her. No, really.

Or just the other day when we pulled over at a stop and there were a few minutes until the bus was supposed to go on... and the chauffeur left the bus, started shouting something angrily in Polish (I think) to another chauffeur and went back on.

Or that time when the chauffeur left the bus, and ran over the street to take out some money.

Or the time when the chauffeur didn't know where to drive, so he left the bus, went into a grocery store (!?) and (I guess) asked for directions.

I've been riding the bus on a regular basis now for over five years, so I've seen some weird ****, but these are the things that immediately pop into my head.

I love riding the bus ^___^ So much more fun than a stupid car.

as someone who rode the city bus all through college to commute, i have had many weird experiences... HOWEVER... one of the strangest... that went on the longest occurred my senior year of high school... every Sunday, after spending the weekend with my friends i would take a bus back home and i was almost always the only one on it and the driver never made me pay and always let me smoke on the bus... as long as i sat in the front and talked to him the entire time... this lasted the entire school year... every weekend Ed would say "flash me your pass Allison!" and then wink... wonder if he still does that? with new "allison"s ...

The adventures of Vermin Supreme continue!

when i lived in Toronto, i was on the StreetCar on my way home and some either Jehovah's Witness or Morom starts to solicite people, i mean wtf, apparently he was unaware that it's illegal to do so on Public Transit or simply didn't care. he got off at the same stop i did and thankfully didn't follow me

Man, I wish.

Good old Toronto Transit. Most of my memories from anything involving the TTC involve insane drunks on the subway back from a Leafs game, or being pleaded with for money when I was like 9.

Probably the most memorable took place when I was in high school. Taking the scummy f*cking buses downtown at rush hour during June. You've got 90 people crammed into a bus with 40 seats.

Now, I'm not trying to sound racist, but Ontario and Toronto in particular is super multicultural and full of so many different races, so you've got a lot of people on these buses who seemingly don't know what deodorant is. Dunking your clothes in AXE before leaving the house doesn't exactly make you CLEAN and the lingering smell of stale cologne and horrible BO is f*cking brutal on those buses at that time of day, combined with the fact that all these people standing are having to lift their arms to hold the overhead bar.

So we stop, dude squeezes on the bus and he's on for all of 20 seconds before he starts hurling all over the place. Again, bus is packed so he's drenching people in vomit. You ever been on a plane where one person gets air sick and the sound of them blowing chunks makes other people start to feel queasy and before you know it half the cabin is letting rip? You get it, except on an overcrowded bus and the vomit isn't just collecting in a bag. Bus driver opens the doors and everyone scatters. Some people are laughing, some are still gagging. Dude who started it all gets off the bus and just screams "YOU PEOPLE SMELL LIKE ****!" I laughed so hard I almost died.

Yeah, that was my experience while living in Europe and riding the trains to and from places when we traveled. It was eye-wateringly bad at points.

Peanut, what ethnicity were those kids who used to hang around your building all the time back when we were younger? It was some kind of European, I believe. Those stories used to crack me up.

Woah! Thank god nothing like that happened to me

Transit in London is pretty fun...there's a guy everyone seems to know as "Singing Bus Guy". He looks normal until he sits down. He usually pulls out his CD player, and I mean like one of the first ones ever made and it is humongous! Once he's all settled, he starts off subtly with some head banging, and then starts "serenading" the other passengers with his musical stylings. Sometimes he raises his pop in a toast, bangs it agains the post, and then drinks to whatever he's toasting. He's kind of entertaining.

Then there's "Crazy Mary" who tells everyone with a cell phone they're whores and earned their phones by being prostitutes. "Spitting Jesus" is pretty fun, as long as he's not spitting on you! He usually asks "Spare change for the saviour?" If you say no he spits on you....good times on the LTC. :)

Those were the Persian kids. God damn.

That's right! I actually remembered in the shower this morning. Damn those Persians!

Wow. Some of these stories are entertaining and crazy. I've never been on public transportation myself because we don't have that where I live in the country. It would be nice though because then I could come and go as I please.