Public Transit Travails

The last couple of weeks have been especially fraught with life altering transit experiences. Well, maybe not quite life altering but definitely worth sharing--if only to reduce the pain! And there will probably be more, thus the creation of a new category for the blog.

One night not too long ago Anirvan and I were on our way back after dinner at a friends house in Emeryville. Now taking bus or BART there is not a simple matter. The Emery-Go-Around works during shopping hours but stops at around 10.15 pm. After that Emeryville feels really far away from home.

So our journey starts:

10.00 pm Leave friends house. It was a fun meal. We start walking, linger and take pictures of cool "under the freeway" sculpture, admiring the shadows cast by them. Life is great!

10.15 pm We are on the street waiting for the #57 bus. We walk a couple of blocks looking for a bus stop but don't find one. In front of our eyes the bus passes us by, even as we wave madly (usually we jump to attract attention--I wonder if that might have worked!). We take the pedestrian overpass/ underpass at Powell and walk to San Pablo to catch the 72. It is quite a long walk. On the way we see this.

10.50 pm On reaching the bus stop we find out from a group of kids hanging out at the bus stop that we had just missed the bus. That means waiting for atleast 20 mins. We pass the Black Muslim bakery and a preacher trying to convert two black and apparently Muslim boys to Christianity in front of the doors of the bakery. We keep walking. We love walking but not so much when we have too many different bags to carry and that book that I am reading and the hardcover that we borrowed from my friend when we didn't know what was to follow that act.

11.15 pm: We wait at the first bus stop with a bench. 5 mins later we see the welcome glowing sign of the bus. We get off on Solano because my big plan is to take the 43 and get dropped off at our doorstep.

11.30 pm And so it happens that we are seated again on a bench waiting for the bus. The neighborhood is less intimidating than the last time sitting on the bench. It is colder now and we are both more tired.

11.45 pm Still waiting for the bus. We start to read the hardcover book I borrowed. That tides us over for a bit. It is getting colder and we are getting more impatient.

12 midnight Still waiting for the bus.

12.05 pm We call a taxi in desperation. I am not sure why we didn't earlier. Maybe it was because we wanted to be really hard core about using public transportation or maybe the cold had affected our brain cells. I think we really wanted to make it all the way using that system--especially after everything we had gone through in trying to use it.

12.15 pm Back at home. Warm and grateful and in disbelief that we had made it back that day--well, technically the next day!