I rode the bus yesterday. There, I said it twice. So it must be true. It is true. I know… I know… I hate the bus and public transportation confuses me. In fact, hanging out online and plotting my bus course took up most of my day yesterday. I carefully wrote down, in my little moleskin, each of the three buses I would need to take. What direction they would be heading, when they approached me, and even on which side of the street the bus would stop. And no, my IQ is quite firmly planted well into the triple digits, thank you very much. It’s just that I’m a driver. With the exception of traffic, I love to drive. I sometimes take the 9pm ferry home from Victoria, knowing that will put me on the US freeway about 11pm, free and clear to drive and think and sing for two hours.

However, I was meeting some friends for dinner and drinks, and they wanted to buy me “hey, congratulations on quitting your job you bum” drinks. Being unemployed, I cannot refuse free anything. Most anything. But I’m terribly terribly prissy when it comes to drinking and driving. As in, I just won’t do it. So I thought, why not get out of the house, and meet your fellow man on the bus? So I used the route planner and 10 to three pm, I was off. iPod in my ears, I started walking down streets in my neighborhood I’ve never walked in the 20+ years this house has been in the family. Weird.

My most reverent wish was that I would meet some real characters on the bus. I have never NOT seen something bizarre, or had something stupid happen, when I ride the bus. Like the time Lloyd, Evildeb and I tried to ride the bus to an art festival. While the driver’s head was turned, Evildeb fed the bus pass given to us by our POE into the dollar bill slot, so it would be “read.” It jammed the whole machine, and she had to drive down to the Metro office days later to pick up the pass. Oh the mass confusion as the driver explained to each new passenger that he would have to take the dollars by hand. Good times.

But the truth is, nothing happened. No one did or said anything, smelled any particular way, expelled any bodily fluids, or performed any grooming rituals, that were at all out of the ordinary. And I just sat and listened to music and read my book.

And this story sums up my current fears. Is my world running out of blog fodder?