My Bus Trip
(6.2.02)
This is a long story. First, background. I need eight
hours of volunteer service to graduate. That is, I needed more, but I
have eight hours left to do. So, on Sunday, starting at 6:30 am, there is
going to be a walk-a-thon. I tried calling to see if I can help, but no
one calls back. Dad suggests I go out there and just show up, and ask to
volunteer then. So I check the bus schedules... the earliest bus that
leaves is at 6:40, and it'll get me there by eight. That's okay. The
thing is probably going to be all day, anyway.
So I get up at 5:30 on
Sunday, and eat breakfast, and head to my bus stop. I stop by Safeway to
get cash in order to pay for the bus trip. I buy a crunch bar, but I'm
not hungry, so I stash it. As I leave Safeway, I see my bus leaving, so I
have to wait for the 7:40 bus.
So the 7:40 bus comes, and I get on,
and it takes me to the Northgate Transit center. Once there, I wait a
half hour for the bus that'll take me to Seattle. I arrive in Seattle at
Third and Pine, and walk to First and Pine, so I can get the bus to take
me to Safeco field, where the walk-a-thon is. Half an hour later (in the
bitter, windy cold) the bus arrives, and I get on. We cruse along, and we
come to a detour. Later I realize that this is four the walk-a-thon, but
I didn't get out then. I was waiting for my stop, listed in the schedule
I printed from the internet. So we turn off the main road, wander through
back roads, stop at a railroad for a train that stops halfway across and
then backs up. Strange train. So finally we get back on the main road, and I watch Safeco field
vanish behind us, and I realize, we're past my stop, aren't we. So I get off, and check to see
how long it'll take for the bus to come back. It'll show at ten. I'm not entirely sure what time
it was, but I think it was around nine or nine thirty.
I don't want to wait an hour for the
bus to come, so I start walking... and I finally get to Safeco field at 10:00. I ask people
guarding the gates to the stadium (they looked like volunteers) if I could sign up for
anything. I donno if they thought I was signing up for the race, probably, but they said
everything was over. And everything looked over, too. So I started walking back to First and
Pine. I wanted to take the bus back there, but when I checked the bus signs, the bus that I rode
wasn't on it. But a couple different busses were. When I got back to First and Pine, I realized
that I could have ridden those busses, and saved the walk. But, I didn't.
Once at First and
Pine, I headed towards Third and Pine, and looked for a bus stop. It helped that I knew which way
I needed to go, otherwise I would have just picked a direction. I had no idea what bus route I
needed to take, so I looked at the destinations, and found one going to Northgate transit
center! Yay!
I sat and I waited, and watched ten different busses go by before my bus
came. I got on it, and it was a nifty bus, because it was old fashioned. And we drove off, and
the bus driver honked the horn a lot. I only saw one reason for him to actually honk, so it
was... interesting. We finally reached Northgate, and I got on the bus to take me back
home. While we were passing my stop, however, I decided to go to the bookstore, instead. So I
switched to the bus that takes me to Bothell, because that bus goes right by the bookstore, and I
spend about an hour looking through the books there. I bought one, but I only bought one because
I wasn't sure how much money was on my card.
When I went to go back to the bus stop, I
realized that there was no stop to go back... so I started walking again. I started walking back,
figuring that I'd hit a bus stop sooner or later. I read my book a bit while walking. After a
time, the road forked, and after a careful study of the street signs (not especially useful,
because the road name changed, and I didn't remember the street names of my other stops) I kept
going in the same direction. I walked for ten mintues, probably longer, uphill, before I decided
that this was a bad idea, and turned around. Ten minutes later, I was back at the fork, and I
took the other road. Behold! Five minutes later, there's my bus stop. The bus was due to arrive
soon, too. So I read my book and waited, while cars drove by, and every once and a while a car
would honk at me. It was odd. The bus was half an hour late, but it finally came, and I rode it
back to the stop where I transfered to the bus that drove by my stop, and I got off there, and
walked home.!
I arrived home at 4:00, waved 'hi' to my step-mom, went upstairs, and fell
asleep. Dad woke me up at 5:30, when he came upstairs to ask me how it went. I related to him
this story (or a close vairent of it)
All total, I spend nine hours and thirty minutes riding
busses or walking between bus stops (counting the bookstore and Safeco field). Sometimes I
impress myself. ;D
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