Back in the Saddle

OK, after many airport delays, I made it home. As always, it is good and bad to be back. I am of course very happy to see Husband, friends, and rabbit, so that is good. On the other hand, I am forced to confront the lack of direction in my professional life these days, which is unfortunate. Oh well.

Anyway, to save money, I took the public bus back from the airport. The M60 is probably one of the worst, if not the worst, bus route in New York City, but it is only $2.00 (less if you have an unlimited Metrocard or put lots of money on your Metrocard at once and got a discount), so I was willing to put up with it. The main problem is that the bus does not run frequently enough, so large crowds of people with luggage begin to accumulate and then try to jam on the bus all at once. The second large problem is although the bus is specifically identified as a route to LaGuardia Airport (which is more or less the end/starting point), the idiots at the MTA (controlled by people in upstate New York who never ride buses, let alone in a big city) placed a type of bus in service that is no different from any other City bus. Meaning: nowhere to put luggage, so it clogs up the aisles, so no one can move around, so people are extra crabby. Plus it makes random stops on the way to and from the airport since it is a regular bus route, thus there are non-travelers who are just trying tot get to work or home or wherever who are stuck climbing over people’s suitcases to get the fuck on and off the bus. While I applaud the effort to have a cheap means of transportation to the airport, this is not urban planning at its finest.

While I was on the bus, an attractive young man sat (actually, smooshed is a more accurate description) on the bench next to me. I wriggled around a bit so that he would not be sitting on the sweater that I had tied around my waist, which had draped itself onto his seat in the nanoseconds between when its prior occupant stood up and he sat down. He must have misunderstood my action and thought I was attempting to as far away from him as I could (which would be about an inch) because he turned to me and politely said, “I’m sorry I smell like garbage, but I just got off of work.”

What depresses me a little is that I hadn’t even noticed, and even after he said that, I still did not smell anything out of the ordinary. Ah, home sweet home!