Riding public transportation in my own neighborhood is on my top 1000 things to do list before I die (BID) list. Last night, I was able to fulfill #51 on my BID list.

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority has a great marketing campaign which shows all the local movers and shakers endorsing the AATA by riding the bus to work. Given my experience, I don’t know how they do it. Due to my car being in the shop, my neighbor graciously drove me to Ypsilanti for a meeting. I needed a ride back and, although she offered, I did not want to call her and, at the last minute, I shied away from asking a total stranger at the arts meeting for a ride home. Thus, I found myself at the main bus terminal in downtown Ypsilanti. With me at the same time were a host of characters I have seen around town during various photo excursions. Several were very helpful and told me what bus to take. One woman needed money and said that hustling in downtown Ann Arbor was far more lucrative than in Ypsilanti. While waiting, a young couple from EMU approached a young woman next to me and began asking her questions including what it felt like to be a Christian, how do you see your life in 10 years and what do you think Jesus looked like. I don’t think she knew these people; but enthusiastically she began to answer their questions. I take it she was a devoted Christian. Before the conversation ended, the #4 bus, thankfully, arrived before the couple had a chance to interrogate me.

When I got on the bus, I sat as close to the driver as possible. I looked at the crowd on the bus, studied the map, each stop and drop off point. A woman with her boyfriend sat in the very back of the bus. I was able to learn something about her as I could hear her cell phone call (discussing her non-food related plans for her food stamp allocations) very clearly. Her voice projection was simply astonishing. She was like a human Bose speaker with a raspy crackle in her voice that one only accomplishes when they’ve had a lifelong addiction to nicotine.

Soon, the bus stopped and a number of people got on and off – the bus population changed drastically. One of the people who got on was a short nervous man who had on a runner’s 5K tee shirt on. I decided he was a former ad agency guy who went off the deep end, had a nervous breakdown and was on a very long leave of absence. The little character running on his shirt looked like him – I thought he might organized the run or have designed it. The back of the shirt said Doner. I decided not to engage him in conversation; in retrospect that was a good decision.

At the next stop some new people got on the bus. Mr. Doner began to swear at them because he apparently felt that they had forged ahead without allowing others to get off the bus first. One of the new riders was a man who sat directly across from me and Mr. Doner. The new passenger immediately told Mr. Doner to F*** off. The conversation deteriorated as Mr. Doner responded by telling the new guy to double F*** Off which, in turn, sparked a fun shouting match until both men, for some unknown reason (perhaps a signal from above) stopped yelling and simply stared out of their respective windows. This reminded me of an Animal Planet show I saw once where there was a fight between two bucks with a similar end result. The bucks, however, were not riding a bus.

Finally, the bus arrived downtown Ann Arbor, I got off and had a pleasant walk home. I crossed something off of my list last night and may continue riding the bus. Then again, perhaps not.