Hey me too, but I haven’t had any racist incidents on buses. My friend did once decide to tell a pretty off-colour joke, pretty loudly once, that got some glares. Also while on the U-Bahn in Germany on my school’s German exchange my partner and I met another guy in my class and his partner, I don’t much like this guy but we made small talk anyway. We were sitting there when he gestured to the girl behind him and goes “Bumsen sie ihr?” at which point I reminded him we were in Germany, and so it was likely this woman spoke german… he got off at the next stop, fearing she would slap him.
I used to ride a bus to & from work each day. It’s a 60ish mile trip. I made that trip for a few years, and lot’s of strange thing happened. Sometimes it would take an hour, sometimes longer depending on weather & traffic. One evening, it took ~5 hours. This is not that story.
Sometimes it would be uneventful, sometimes great things would happen. Like the time I got to see hot girl-on-girl action happening in the seat in front of me. But this is not that story, either.
No, this story takes place in the middle of winter, when the bus is filled to capacity with commuters. I was in the aisle seat. On my right was a woman reading the paper. On my left, across the aisle, was a woman with a bad cold. She just kept coughing and coughing. On her left was another woman.
We’d been trapped on the bus for a while, the weather & traffic being what it was. We’d been on for an hour or so, and I figured we had another hour to go. The woman across the aisle from me had been coughing non-stop the entire time. Non-effin-stop. I felt sorry for her at first, but my sympathy gave way to a kind of irrational hatred.
And suddenly, she had the look in her eye. I knew it was coming. A full 30 seconds before it happened, I knew.
Aww, shit, she’s done had too much. She’s going to hurl any second now. Fuck fuck fuck get up and go to the little bathroom at the back get up please for the love of God GET UP
I summoned every bit of psychic ability I could muster and willed her to get up and hit the head before it was too late.
But it was too late. HUUUUNNGGHRLLLEHMNPRHH
She spewed all over the seat in front of her, the aisle in between us, her jacket, her bag, the woman next to her…it was horrendous. She tried to mop up with the single McDonalds napkin she was carrying, but as you might imagine it did little good. The lady I was sitting next to tried desperately to hide herself behind the paper she was reading, and I think I was very lucky that she didn’t hurl as well.
We had to ride the next hour in the horrid traffic with the vomit drying in a puddle on the floor, while the heat cooked it up nice for us. The stench was horrific. Frankly, I have no idea how we managed to get home without anyone else upchucking. But we did.
As I recall, I didn’t eat much dinner that night.
Would you mind translating that for us non-German speaking Dopers, please?
A couple of years ago, my company had an end of busy season party at a bar called Margaritaville. We likes to drink. The bus ride over was pretty uneventful (it was 8 am after all, not enough time to really get plastered, although we were trying) just your usual drinks being spilled and lap sitting. Coming back, however, was a different story. The bus is silent, as everyone is extremely wasted (it’s only 4 pm, but we’re over-achievers), and trying not to hurl as we drive over the hill (Highway 17, a maliciously curvy highway, especially if you are drunk). We get to the last curve, and the man next to me starts making ominous noises. And then he starts to spew, everywhere, particularly in the hair of the woman sitting in front of him. :eek: And then the group hurl starts. The bus reeked of tequila from all those margaritas suddenly being revisited. I still can’t smell margaritas or cheap tequila without wanting to hurl.
Second bus story, I worked in a small police department one summer. There was a bank robbery and they are describing the suspects and then they get to the getaway vehicle - the Express! At first, we laughed, and then thought, oh, no, hostages. Nope. These brilliant criminal masterminds had robbed the bank with toy guns and then waited for the bus, not the next bus, no, they wanted the *right * bus. :smack: IIRC, since they didn’t threaten the driver or attempt to take hostages, they were only charged with bank robbery. We laughed about them for days. I mean, really, if you’re going to rob a bank, why would your getaway plan involve using a bus ?
I have a few stories, this one comes to mind first.
I was living in downtown Chicago. I didn’t have a car, I took public transportation everywhere. So it was ChicagoFest time, what is now called The Taste of Chicago, back then it was held at Navy Pier (way before the renovation). So I take the bus to State St. downtown where I can transfer to a bus going to the Fest.
Since me and 10,000 other people at the stop were going to Navy Pier, the bus “honcho” directing the bus drivers decided it would be best to see how many of this 10,000 we could get on one bus. I estimate maybe 300 of us finally crammed into the bus like sardines. We go about a block or two and there’s a loud boom, the bus skids to a stop listing to its right side. We are all ordered off the bus. We get out and see the bus has a broken axle, it must have been overloaded don’t ya think? So we are ordered to wait for another bus. About a half hour later, here comes our replacement bus. Most of the people from the broken bus laugh and joke around and get on the replacement, I decided to wait for the next bus. Finally the next bus shows up, another half hour or so has past. I get on, it’s not too crowded, maybe only 200 people on this one.
So we inch along making our way to Navy Pier. About a block or two into the ride, here we go, some young punk has decided to start an obscene verbal war with an elderly couple. The old man takes a swipe at the kid and down they go, rolling around on the floor together as people yell and scream “break it up”. The bus driver promptly stops the bus and the police are called. Fairly quickly the police arrive, they grab the two or three people involved in the fight and tell the rest of us to get off the bus. Instead of waiting for the next bus, I decided to walk the rest of the way, it was only a mile or so.
I’ve had bad experiences on public transport.
Sitting next to a guy masturbating.
Having the guy beside me grope me.
Stuff like that.
It’s the less weird things I don’t mind as much. Like the retired Psychiatrist who struck up a conversation with me, gave me his card and invited me to dinner. I don’t go to dinner with 70 year old men I meet on the bus, but someone might.
I have a rule on public transport now, I sit next to women, or put a bag on the seat beside me. Saves much unpleasantness.
When I was 17 I got a Greyhound from Chicago to Indianapolis. It was packed. Every seat was filled, except for one double that was empty. Delighted with myself, I put my bag up in the locker, and sat down. I reckoned I could lie down there and sleep the whole way.
I was concerned about the amount of suppressed laughter that emanated from the seats around me. Then I noticed a smell. Of vomit. And indeed there was dried-up vomit on the floor under the seat next to the window.
Knowing it would only be a few hours’ journey, I decided that I could endure the odour in return for having two seats to myself.
Then, as the bus rolled out of the station, the door of the toilet at the back of the bus swung open, and the seat’s former occupant returned to stake his claim. Oh deary deary me.
He was very skinny, with about three days’ worth of stubble. He stank. He had a greasy mullet under a baseball cap, a dirty sweatshirt with dried puke down it, a crust in the corners of his mouth, and filthy jeans. His breath reeked, and he had one of those personal space things whereby he leaned right into you to say anything.
“Hi, I’m Patrick,” he slurred through broken yellow teeth, and offered me a puke-covered hand for me to shake. I attempted to shake it without touching it. He crawled over me to get to the window seat.
“Hey, where you from?” he said, all up in my face.
“England,” I replied.
“I never been there. Europe. I was in Germany with tha army. Is it in Germany?” he breathed on me.
After a few minutes of merciful silence, he hauled out a can of tuna and corn, and opened it with a penknife, then started eating it out of the can with a fork he had in his pocket. He offered me a forkful. I declined, trying to look around to see if there was anywhere else on the bus I could sit, and how to leave without upsetting him. But there was no escape.
I decided to read my book to distract me.
“Whatcher readin’?” he enjoined. Wearily I told him. “Meditations in Green.”
“What’s it about?”
“The Vietnam War,” I said with some resignation.
“'Nam!” he yelled. “Woo! Hell yeah! Sounds great, man. I love war books.” He then put his finger with its long, dirt-filled fingernail onto the first word on the page, leaned over me, and began tracing each word as he read it out loud. Very, very slowly. Every time I tried to turn the page he protested, “Hey man, I ain’t finished yet!”
I gave up reading it myself, and handed him the book. I decided to try to sleep.
Patrick kept on waking me from my attempted doze with a poke to the ribs to ask what some word or other meant, or how it was pronounced. I was finally shaken into total wakefulness when he said loudly “Dude, you wanna buy some coke?”
He then pulled a huge baggie of cocaine out of his sweatshirt pocket and waved it at me.
“Put that away!” I hissed.
“No man, it’s all cool. I got scales and everything!” He pulled out the scales too.
“Shit, man,” I whispered loudly. “Put that AWAY!”
“OK dude, your loss, I coulda done you a real good deal,” and went back to reading my book.
When we arrived in Indianapolis I ran off the bus. Out of the dozens on the bus, I was the first one onto terra firma.
And as far as I know, Patrick still has my book.
What the hell?! They let her off because she wasn’t on drugs?
The woman threatened physical acts of violence against every one of her customers–every one of them–in a closed environment where escape was impossible. And the cops don’t even care if they can’t get a drug charge out of it? That makes me fucking sick. So obsessed with their War on Drugs (which often defies scientific knowledge and societal experiences in favor of blind belief and outright laws) that they don’t even care about someone who presents a physical threat to a busful of people. “She’s going to kill you? Well, that’s too bad; we’d help, really, but we’re really busy trying to keep people from exploring their own minds.”
Sorry for the rantishness there, I know this isn’t GD or the Pit…
In college, I was taking the bus home after a big night of drinking.
I got on the bus and next thing I remember, the bus driver was standing over me going, “hey, where do you live?”
The bus was completely empty. He’d made at least 1 complete circuit.
I told him my address and he drove the bus right to my apartment.
(A different time, I also puked on one of those busses after a night of drinking.)
Then there was the bus trips to the ball game.
Many years ago (circa 1971), a couple loony friends on mine would organize an all day trip into Chicago for a Cubs or Sox game. We lived about an hour’s drive from the city. So in the morning we would fill the coolers with beer, roll about 100 doobs, and make about 100 sandwiches for the adventure. We would load up the bus and leave about 11AM … and away we go.
Baggies full of doobies, downers, and whatever else happened to be in town, were passed around the bus. Take a couple and pass it on please. It was like someone handing out baggies full of their homemade cookies. Then the craps game would start at the back of the bus, there was always a big crowd back there waiting to get their bets in.
This was a “nice” bus, like a Greyhound rather than a school bus. But there was no bathroom in the back. So we decided rather than stop every 10 minutes for a piss break, we would just piss down the steps of the bus the let it trickle on to the highway. After a $100 tip, the bus driver agreed that was a good idea. So down the road we go, smoke boiling out the windows like the place was on fire, and a steady stream of piss flowing out the front door.
This was the middle of July, but this one character that would come with us would always dress up like Santa Claus. I can’t figure out how he could stand that warm outfit in 90 degree weather. But he said he always got on TV that way. We had an exhibitionist too, he would strip down to nothing but cowboy boots and walk up and down the isle of the bus serving cold beers to people in need.
So we’re all basically toast when we get to the ball game. The bus unloads, half the people head for the ballpark, the other half head for the nearest bar. The ones that make it into the park “buy” a beer vendor so we get exclusive rights to his inventory. We would keep him running back and forth to replenish his inventory for most of the game.
Then the game would get over, we would all make the rounds at the bars in the neighborhood trying to locate everyone. Once we had a head-count of at least 80 percent of the people we started the day with, we would load the bus and head back home. As you can imagine, the ride home was always much more quiet.