We had a simple plan: take a bus to the Haight, which would necessitate at least one transfer, shop for boots, eat lunch, take the bus back home. We also had a pocketful of quarters in case we were still in the Haight or between buses after our first transfer timed out. Although one useful thing I had already learned from the few times I road the train from the Sunset to the Castro is that most of the time no one actually checks for transfers – you can just get on and sit down. You could ride the bus for free until the unlucky day a cop checking transfers caught you and wrote you a ticket. I assume they make the penalty harsh enough that it isn’t cheaper to just employ this method full time. Okay, I tried to look that up but all I found was an anecdotal story that indicated a citation for not having a muni pass is $250. I did find THIS quote from an article on the subject,“Though statistics aren't available, MUNI (SF Transit) estimates put unpaid fares at five million dollars each year.” And I’m already off-topic. Hard to believe I once got paid the medium-bucks for marketing, isn’t it? That I used to get paid for my ability to quickly and effectively get to the point? ANYWAY, heading out we were the only ones riding the bus that stops in front of our house (nine times out of ten when it passes us it is complete empty, except for the driver, and chugs on by without stopping) and the bus we transferred to was only mildly full (I think everyone onboard was seated) when it let us off in the Haight.
Right in front of Fluevog. So of course I have to digress and talk about boots. No surprise there. But this is not the story you think it is. This is a story… about JOHN. Yep. While I was picking up boots and putting them back down and frowning and trying to figure out what I exactly wanted out of the practical ankle boots I had come seeking I suggested John might kill time by trying on some boots of his own. So he did. And then something shocking and miraculous happened. For just a fleeting second John UNDERSTOOD how I feel about boots, or at least about the boots currently on his feet. He said, I swear to god, “Can I wear them out of the store?” Yes, not only had he found boots HE really liked (see picture) but he liked them so much, thought they were so great, he didn’t want to put his Converse back on. He was in boot love! An emotional state I have tried endlessly to explain to him. I had repeatedly gushed about how ridiculously amazing Fluevog’s Angel-Soled boots were (they resist alkali, water, acid, fatigue and Satan) but since I tend to gush about, well, lots of things, he didn’t really believe me that putting them on the first time was like “putting on your favorite boots you’ve already broken in” even though really, it is. I still actually marvel, when I lace up my knee-highs and stand up, how comfortable they are.
In the meantime I was having NO boot luck. They didn’t have either of the boots I liked in my size and I wasn’t going to get the exact same boots as John in a smaller size because: lame. The boots he picked out were similar to mine but different enough that we could wear them out together without feeling dorky. I finally decided (to the disapointment of the Fluevog sales associate) that I would just order boots online since I knew a 6 ½ of whatever I wanted would fit me. And later, that was exactly what I did and they arrived and made me quite happy. If they came in white I would order a pair to wear to work with my scrubs. I mean, if they resist alkali and acid they probably also resist dog-pee, right? Sadly the only white Fluevog shoes only come in MEN’S sizes, not women’s or unisex.
ANYWAY, I then discovered something else, which is you can totally get a contact high from someone else’s boot purchase. I was almost as happy that John had found boots (which yeah, I thought looked really yummy on him) as I would have been if we’d BOTH found boots. I still felt that warm “BOOTS” glow. Once the boot purchasing was done we had a quite tasty lunch (getting to eat really good BBQ ribs, while not as exciting as getting boots, is still pretty high on my list of happy-making-things) and then geared up for part two of our afternoon: Taking the bus back HOME.
This ended up being much more what I had expected from the bus riding thing. The two buses that were supposed to be half an hour apart were running, literally, right behind each other and when we got on (after 25 minutes of waiting, and not just random waiting, but “the bus should have been here at 2:00 and now it is 2:20 and it just went by the other way” kind of waiting. We got the last two seats. By the time we got off at the station to wait for the bus back to OUR neighborhood there were people onboard standing (and swaying) waiting to take our seats. So we got off, crossed the street and waited. And waited. And waited s’more. As bus after bus after bus that was not OUR bus pulled up, waited to see if we would get on and then pulled away again when we failed to move. Finally our bus came, we boarded with our just barely expired transfers and I got to experience the F.U.L.L. route (since we’d gotten on at practically the END of the route in front of our house) of OUR bus. It slowly ground up and down and around the hills of Twin Peaks. I’m pretty sure it did two circles, a capital cursiveR and a large figure eight before it finally lurched up our street. John opined that it would have been faster to just walk back up the mountain to our house from the station but, factoring in the 3 – 5 stops we would have had to make for me to have mini-asthma attacks (I wasn’t carrying my inhaler) I figure it would have timed out about the same. There was only one other couple on the bus, a cute little Asian couple that looked like they’d been married 50 years, and, unsurprisingly since our neighborhood is a residential area filled largely with retirees, they got off at our stop. And the empty bus chugged away.
Our mission was successfully completed! And for $3.00 we’d done in 3 ½ hours what we could have done for probably $0.41 cents in gas in less than two hours. Whoo!
Surprisingly (to me) what I ended up hating most about the bus was not that people were breathing germs on me. It was that these germ-infested people all have the ability and the right to YANK the damn cord and have the bus STOP where they want to get off. And since it is human nature (or at least American nature, which is why we all weigh an extra 20 – 100 pounds) to want to get off as close to where you are going as possible, the damn cord got yanked every couple blocks. I ended up thinking, “you could have gotten off two blocks ago the last time the cord was yanked and WALKED from there dammit!” about 27 times during our brief bus venture. The bus is SO freaking slow. Agonizingly slow. Between stopping at bus stops where people are waiting, stopping quite a bit in general SF traffic and then obligingly stopping every single time someone yanks the cord the bus is STOPPED more than it is in motion. As a control freak THIS, of course, bugs the CRAP out of me. If I have to be stopped in traffic I would SO rather be alone in my climate-controlled, doesn’t-smell like feet, comfy little Mini. But that’s okay, because I found a website that will calculate how many trees need to be planted to offset the damage you’re doing to the atmosphere and then you just pay them to go plant them for you.
A few days later, when John and I mapped out the route I would need to take after I was offered a job downtown and I realized I would have to take the bus, the TRAIN (which is notorious for being late and breaking down) and then ANOTHER bus I had to politely decline the offer. I also had to say no because the floors were dirty. It literally took all my restraint not to clean the exam room I was in while I was waiting to be interviewed. But even if it had been my dream* job, there was no way I was taking on that morning commute. I was trying to imagine it in the rain in the dark and I came up with a BIG OLD NO FREAKING WAY.
So I have to find a job with either PARKING or only one tranfer. Hopefully one that doesn't involve waiting for the train that sometimes never comes. Wish me luck.
*I am pretty confident my dream job will never include GROOMING cats. Sure, watching them blink bitterly into the gusting hairdryers that clip onto their kennels is pretty entertaining but that would certainly NOT make up for the scratches I would incur while trying to shove a feline into soapy water. I’ve learned this the hard way – Cats don’t like baths. At all. I have the scars to prove it.
- Related Link: http://www.fluevog.com
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