Saturday 9 August 2008

A note on commuting

Ah, good old 48. I feel like such a Londoner riding the bus from Mare Street down through Shoreditch and Bishopsgate and over London Bridge to work each morning. I sit on the top of the double-decker bus, people watch, and marvel as the drivers of the 48 are able to dodge and weave all the oblivious pedestrians and random construction barriers in their path.

The drivers of the 26, it seems, are not so adept.

On my way to catch the 48, I can shave a few minutes off my walk if I hop on the 26. (It's not worth it to wait for the 26, but if I'm at a bus stop when one rolls up I hop on.) So there I was, blissfully distracted by This American Life on my iPod as we barreled down Well Street. Properly distracted, I didn't noticed that we had veered perilously close to a dumpster at a construction site until the woman next to me grabbed onto my arm with one of those Panic Squeezes. I looked over, and everyone on the port side of the bus had leaped back, shattered glass everywhere. The bus had hit the dumpster taking a turn too sharp and knocked out two huge panes of glass in the bus. Thankfully, no one was injured. And, like a true Londoner, my first thought was, "Shit, now I'm going to have to wait for the next bus!"

1 comment:

Ashley said...

Just curious...

have you had any experiences on the bus like Harry did in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban?