Saturday, January 31, 2009

Transit Adventure III

After the Thursday night hockey game, we arrived home and went to bed after 12:30. I had a climate change conference to go to the next day, and I didn't want to miss the plenary, so I got up at 6:30. I thought that if I caught the 7:30 bus I might be able to make it to the Embarcadero by 8, but I wouldn't have been able to do so by walking to the Castro.

So I headed over to the bus stop. I got there at 7:24, because Matt says you have to get there early to get a seat. There were no people. And no bus, despite the fact that the bus usually takes a 10 minute break there.

Shortly thereafter, a car pulled up to the stop and the front window rolled down. I saw these two older women that I'd run into in the stairwell of my building. We're going down to Castro, they said, would you like a ride?

I thought this over for about one second, before deciding, yes, I would in fact like a ride. After all, the car was nice, they lived in my building, and the bus was obviously not coming.

So I got in.

Scoot over they said, we're picking more people up.

And sure enough, at the next bus stop, we picked up a gentleman who apparently had been getting rides from these ladies for quite some time. I suspect he might have met them just the way I did - at the bus stop. The lady in the front seat told me that they always try to give people rides, but lots of people don't take them up on it - after all, it's not like they know them.

The old lady that was driving the car flew down the hill like nobody's business, with the other lady reminding her to slow down because they had a new passenger. Apparently the driver used to work for Muni. She got down the hill in about two minutes, a trek that would have taken me 20 minutes on foot and 10 minutes on the bus. Then she dropped the other three of us off right in front of the subway station.

I hopped on a train and was at the conference by 7:45.

Only in San Francisco.

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