Drop Those Drawers!

It's always a bit of an adventure on Miami-Dade Transit, as you can tell from previous posts on this very blog. Whether it's other passengers who make the ride more interesting or the nasty drivers who give you an earful, you're certain to have anything but a boring ride in the morning on a Miami bus.

My friend, Greg, has told me horror stories of his years as a Miami Transit passenger and I have to say, they always sounded a bit exaggerated. Like the time a driver misjudged the height of an overpass, or the height of the bus (either way, it was a bad assumption), and proceeded to peel off the top of the bus. Gone, just gone, drove right under the overpass and the top of the bus peeled off like the top of a sardine can. Or the time that a bus broke down in the middle of the highway and caught on fire. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't believe Greg, it's just that he has a flair for the dramatic when it comes to telling a story.

Well, as of this morning I have changed my tune about Greg's ability to tell a straight tale. We were riding along like normal and *boom* something happened. It was loud, it shook the bus, we got rocked out of our seats and the bus leaned rather sharply to the side. People on the sidewalk jumped. Cars behind us screetched to a halt. The driver had driven up onto the curb - hence the jolt and the tilting and the jumping out of the way - and even worse, he had driven up onto the exact part of the curb that had been crumbling and had steel rebar sticking out of it. Steel rebar is used to reinforce concrete in flat applications. It's a bar about 3/4 to an inch thick and lays in a grid pattern w/in the concrete. Well, since this particular piece had been crumbling already the rebar was sticking out at just the right angle to lodge its sharp end into the tire when the driver drove up onto the curb. Tire popped, bus tilted even more, bus stopped, driver handed us all transfer slips and told us to get off the bus. No explanation of what had happened, no apology for making us all late to wherever we all were going, nothing. Was he drunk? Did he fall asleep? Was he just not paying attention? He was definitely up on the curb before he blew out the tire. I'm sure I'll get no explanation just like I've never gotten an explanation of why the 4:30 bus hasn't come 3 times when I've been waiting for it after work. I know traffic is bad sometimes, but to wait almost 2 hours for a bus? Not cool.

Since we had to wait for the next bus (which wasn't scheduled to come by for another 45 minutes) another girl and I went to the KMart that was right next to where we stopped. KMart - hadn't been to one in a long time and it might be worth it to kill some time and see what kind of specials they have on post-holiday stuff. We looked at bedding, at clothes, at socks, and we picked up a couple pairs of panties. We were headed for the check out not 20 minutes after we walked in the door, when we saw Greg at the front of the store. "Melissa!!! Melissa, the bus is coming! C'mon!" As we got closer we could see he was pretty agitated. "Melissa, put those drawers down and let's go! The bus is coming!" We ran out, but the bus had already gone. Somehow the 45 minutes had turned into 20 and Greg had missed the bus with us because he came to drag us out of KMart. That's a real friend right there.

I called the man, asked if he could come get us (which he graciously did), and we were only 45 minutes late to work. Funny thing is, we got to work the same time as the people who caught the bus. The man is awesome. W/o him I'd be a mess. I'd be a mess with new panties, but a mess nonetheless.