yesterday was one of those days at the end of summer where it's cool enough in the morning you wear your jacket and warm enough in the afternoon, you take it off. I was on my way home from Bellingham. I wore my fall jacket, a wool flannel 3/4 length tailored coat. My first husband's second wife, an x to both of us, was picking me up in her Volvo. She drove me to Keystone, where I would travel across the bay to Port Townsend. Ostensibly, in Port Townsend I would pick up the Jefferson County Transit bus and head to Sequim, where I would connect with the clallam county transit and get home to Clallam Bay. It worked out that way but there were a few little out of the ordinary events that made a day I would blog... I wouldn't blog usually, too much going on to sit down and read it back to myself for one, but since I've written three long emails to my three kids already today, I'm going to blog out the rest of yesterday's traveling. I'll hope for the best.
So I stood on the curb of my son's house, waiting for my ride, my two bags, one color coordinated to my fall jacket, the other in black, that held the items of groceries I'd gotten while I was visiting. both bags were heavy. I hoisted them into the volvo and off we went. we didn't stop for coffee, she had hers, I had orange juice on ice. as we went down the road we talked about stream reclamation, addiction to oxycodone, not about our mutual exhusband who is one of those people that the less is said about, the better. we both know better than to bring HIM up...that's what really we have in common, in fact.
so we rolled along, crossing the bridge over the Suquamish and cruising by the gas pumps at the Indian casino where gas was always very reasonable. Three ninety four today, I noticed. Not so reasonable. We came into Oak Harbor, made the turn at the bottom of the street up the hill past the entrance to Walmart, a nice espresso stand no, it was yogurt, with a play on words to come up with something about WHIDGURT or something, reminds me of my belly and how slack my stomach muscles are...mmhmm
We made the ferry no problem and I walked on, saying goodbye we'll have to do this again when I come to Bellingham and I'll take you to lunch..I tell her and she's like 'oh no...you don't have to do that, but I know I must, at some point...'
The ferry across is the last of my pleasant journey although I'm across to the Peninsula, I'm waiting on JeffTransit to get me as far as Sequim. I'm sure there's a problem when the shuttle stop hasn't shuttled and there's plain white military buses in place of the several stops the shuttle would be making. I wait over an hour for the 'convenient' shuttle at the stop by the ferry booths. As I climb into the shuttle, I tell the driver I'm headed to Sequim on the number eight, my destination is Port Angeles. When I get over to the transit center, which by now I could have walked to several times, although my bags are more than too heavy to haul that far, I wish I'dbrought along the little wheeled stand that allows for bag stacking and transport. I'd gone off without it. It would certainly have come in handyand gotten me a great deal further than I was able to manage without it. The shuttle pulls into the transit center and the driver goes "look, there's number eight...there he goes.." and off went number eight and shuttle bus B driver, this fine sunny friday before Labor Day,is shaking his head, 'gee that's a shame...you missed it' which I think is kind of mean of him to just let it drive off without me when it was practically side by side of his bus when we pulled in there
as I read the schedule when Shuttle Bus B pulls out, I find that this was the last Number Eight until 3:15 that afternoon...it wasn't even noon yet, it was about quarter of. I had no idea there wasn't a number eight until late afternoon, I had to catch a 5 o'clock in PA to get out to clallam bay..how was I going to make that? Anxiety began to build.
I wandered around the transit center, talking on the phone, shedding my winter coat to sit in the warm sun, hauling bags and jacket to the nearby Safeway where I used the lavatory, hauling all that back to the transit center where I talked to the shuttle driver again, why didn't you tell that Number Eight to hang on? I ask him...he looks at me like the actor William Macy? kind of had that face...and he doesn't give me the finger but his face is really saying something like too bad lady...just too bad...and I know I told him when I got on his bus that I needed to get to PA...so he sees the bus go off without me but he's not about people making their connections...and all afternoon he's rolling by and I'm seeing him for three hours and I'm thinking he's mean...so then I ask another bus driver, t his one looks like Fidel, the guy I bought my other house from, a Basque is Fidel...red in the face, corny haircut, runs a Shingle mill in Amanda Park, all about the dollars, is fidel..but he's successful and here's his lookalike driving a transit bus and I ask this guy, well, I guess he looks rather like an Older Treat Williams too, I say is there any way to make some sort of connection to get on the number eight to Sequim so I don't have to sit here all afternoon waiting for another one? and this guy goes...no, there isn't...and I go...well darn it all anyway...and so I go back to sitting there which is all I can do because I've read my book for the trip...my things are too cumbersome to walk around port townsend with and that's all there is to it...I'll have to wait for three hours...because the bus I wanted to get on pulled out right in front of me and my bus driver let it go...I didn't know it was a number eight or I would have ran screaming after it, which I kind of did but he was too close to MacDonald's to hear me...and I didn't go Macdonalds because I didn't have any spare money for any burgers or anything. I did have some lunch along, I ate an apple, I drank my lemon water, I finished my other burrito...I hadn't packed any dessert other than the apple but I wasn't really hungry. I was trying really hard not to be angry with the William Macy dude...but I wasn't having too much luck with that.
Ok, then things got more strange. Three o'clock came. Number Eight to Sequim finally showed up. Well, lookit who's driving number eight. It's the Fidel wannabe...he's been on another route, oh no, there was no number eight showing up at the transit center for three hours but then here's the Fidel character and HE's driving it. Or is it the older Treat Williams wannabe? One of the two or both, or maybe just a legman from the local mob...I dunno...maybe they keep the teamsters in line like this...who knows... This guy, what does he tell me when I get on his bus? Oh you know what he says...and real friendly and warm while he's doing it...'sorry you had to wait all afternoon for your bus'...and I can't help myself that I'm sarcastic with him, "sure you are'I tell him...but he's stepping on the gas and we're pulling out of the transit center finally, oh finally, leaving Port Townsend, so I don't think he hears me and that's just as well becaue it never pays to be rude to people who are driving you anywhere, they tend to get a little bombastic with the steering...
ahemmm....
so, rolling down the road I don't see the hot air balloons over Sequim that I noticed leaving town, but they're still there I am told. I don't talk much to the Treat Williams guy, he's bad karma in my book because I don't see how they'd give him the three o'clock run on number eight when he's been going everywhere else the earlier part of the afternoon. We get into Sequim and there's a small layover for the commuter to Port Angeles. I first use the restroom then I take my heavy bags and walk around the block with them. I realize half way around that this is too heavy what I'm carrying and so I take a short cut through a vacant yard with a rickety wooden fence behind which there is a great big dog. The great big dog is booming at me, barking with an ominous tone that spells doom if he happens to push over the fence and gnaw off one of my shins, which happens a lot anyways, my shins are pretty well scarred. I get through the vacant lot, find a warm spot in the sunshine, set down my bags. And then here comes the bus to town. I pay my all day transfer fee and get my flourescent green numbered sheet of paper. I don't need to use it for a bookmark today because my boook is finished, I've read it. I clip it together with a bobby pin, put it in my pocket. We leave the transit center and the ride to port angeles is begun. I'm thinking every time the bell rings to allow a passenger to depart, the minutes are ticking away and my connection for the Clallam Bay bus is growing that much more slim in possibility. Two unwed mothers and baby get on, hand each other cash, talk on their cell phones. A guy with half blonde hair half black hair gets on and falls asleep immediately on his backpack in his lap. I'm sitting in the front seat before the cargo bin where my bags are. We roll into Port Angeles after macking serveral passenger stops and I'm ready to chew my nails with anxiety. I see the bus marked "FORKS" and I think 'yeah!' it hasn't gone yet. I quickly pick up my luggage and cross the street. I climb onto the bus and sit down in the first available seat which when the bus driver comes on board he tells me 'here comes a passenger with a walker, you'll have to move'...and I think, hmmm...all day long lugging that luggage, I need a walker...but I move and lo and behold...here comes walker lady and I really doubt she needs that walker for herself because what she has done is load up that walker with a pet carrier, groceries, a cardboard box with more stuff in it...and the bus driver rolls out the red carpet for her because they have this thing like an escalator that unfolds onto the sidewalk and a thing like a walker can just roll right up it, which is what the entirely huge lady does with her belongings all perched and piled on the walker. she gets the front seat I'd had and plops into with a huge 'flluuusssshhh' of air from the seat cushion and she nearly takes up two seats I don't recall that anyone sat with her although theymay have squeezed themselves in but they were doomed to fall into the aisle should we stop short because I don't think there was really any room for another passenger there.. Didn't look so to me anyway.
so this giant lady gets on board with all her stuff and some little kid saying goodbye to one of his split up parents is in front of her on the side sides and he asks about the creature in the pet carrier. "that's Shadow Ann' says the lady. I dn't know why I think that Shadow Ann is a cat,,I thought I heard someone say it WAS a cat but no matter...it's Shadow Ann, we all know that, because the giant lady has a gint voice. You can hear her over the roar of the engine, the open windows, she opens some more when she gts on because she can do that easily enough, although she needs the walker for sure...for the pet carrer with Shadow Ann in it...the kid is looking at the pet carrier and the cat inside, like I say, I thought it was a cat...and then this other kid comes on and he's saying he's going to see his mom in FORKS where he hasn't been in a w hile and he's got new school shoes and he puts them on to show the other kid what he got from his dad...'my mom doesn't have a job right now' he says to the kid ...and then we're off and away and we get out of Port Angeles and we're hearing about shadow Ann and what she bought her son and her husband who is her husband again and somewhere past Lake Crescent the new shoes kid asks the other kid did he far? and the kid looks at Shadow Ann's pet carrier and he goes shaking his head seriously back and forth 'that wasn't me'...that was HIM! and he points at the carrier and the bus driver looks up into his rear view and he goes 'DID THAT CAT poop on my BUS??' and the big lady goes 'yes in fact HE DID!' which is really confusing me because I'm thinking Shadow Ann is no doubt afemale cat...but then the lady says she needs some towels some lysol spray and somewhere in there Shadow Ann is allowed to roam free while she cleansup the foul smelling substance in the Pet Carrier and the bus driver has her open, or someone like another male passenger I forget who did this, the escape hatch at the ceiling at the front of the bus and windows are opened and the place smells bad until the lysol takes over a little and we're gtting back to normal I think and then all of a sudden there is a squirming at my shins...always getting a beating shins...something like a gigantic rat and I let out a loud 'ACKKKKKK!' like I've been goosed majorly...and here comes this little pint-sized chihuahua looking at me with his bald eyes and knowing he's startled me and I see him and I look at the back of the head of the giant lady and I start to laugh at the sound of my own goosing sqwawk...he's not a cat and he smelled up the bus and he's escaped and so I have to pick him up because he's crawled up my leg and I hand him off to the person in front of me which I guess was the other passenger in that seat because I know I didn't hand him to the giant lady...she was kind of on my nerves from the time she rolled in with that walker all loaded with her stuff and not her using it to assist her walking and maneuvering.
So I'm still laughing when I get off the bus at Sappho to transfer to the clallam bay bus. I don't tell anyone about shadow ann...the thing that I laugh about is how I screamed when that dog came climbing up my leg...it was as though a giant rat had been set free on top of the bad smell and there's this giantlady sitting in front of me and she's been talking all the way there about a CAT named shadow ann and a chihuahua turns up instead. I didn't know what became of the little dog...I got off the bus and hoped I wouldn't have to ride with that lady again...I knew the moment I saw her we were all in for it and we were...
So I stood on the curb of my son's house, waiting for my ride, my two bags, one color coordinated to my fall jacket, the other in black, that held the items of groceries I'd gotten while I was visiting. both bags were heavy. I hoisted them into the volvo and off we went. we didn't stop for coffee, she had hers, I had orange juice on ice. as we went down the road we talked about stream reclamation, addiction to oxycodone, not about our mutual exhusband who is one of those people that the less is said about, the better. we both know better than to bring HIM up...that's what really we have in common, in fact.
so we rolled along, crossing the bridge over the Suquamish and cruising by the gas pumps at the Indian casino where gas was always very reasonable. Three ninety four today, I noticed. Not so reasonable. We came into Oak Harbor, made the turn at the bottom of the street up the hill past the entrance to Walmart, a nice espresso stand no, it was yogurt, with a play on words to come up with something about WHIDGURT or something, reminds me of my belly and how slack my stomach muscles are...mmhmm
We made the ferry no problem and I walked on, saying goodbye we'll have to do this again when I come to Bellingham and I'll take you to lunch..I tell her and she's like 'oh no...you don't have to do that, but I know I must, at some point...'
The ferry across is the last of my pleasant journey although I'm across to the Peninsula, I'm waiting on JeffTransit to get me as far as Sequim. I'm sure there's a problem when the shuttle stop hasn't shuttled and there's plain white military buses in place of the several stops the shuttle would be making. I wait over an hour for the 'convenient' shuttle at the stop by the ferry booths. As I climb into the shuttle, I tell the driver I'm headed to Sequim on the number eight, my destination is Port Angeles. When I get over to the transit center, which by now I could have walked to several times, although my bags are more than too heavy to haul that far, I wish I'dbrought along the little wheeled stand that allows for bag stacking and transport. I'd gone off without it. It would certainly have come in handyand gotten me a great deal further than I was able to manage without it. The shuttle pulls into the transit center and the driver goes "look, there's number eight...there he goes.." and off went number eight and shuttle bus B driver, this fine sunny friday before Labor Day,is shaking his head, 'gee that's a shame...you missed it' which I think is kind of mean of him to just let it drive off without me when it was practically side by side of his bus when we pulled in there
as I read the schedule when Shuttle Bus B pulls out, I find that this was the last Number Eight until 3:15 that afternoon...it wasn't even noon yet, it was about quarter of. I had no idea there wasn't a number eight until late afternoon, I had to catch a 5 o'clock in PA to get out to clallam bay..how was I going to make that? Anxiety began to build.
I wandered around the transit center, talking on the phone, shedding my winter coat to sit in the warm sun, hauling bags and jacket to the nearby Safeway where I used the lavatory, hauling all that back to the transit center where I talked to the shuttle driver again, why didn't you tell that Number Eight to hang on? I ask him...he looks at me like the actor William Macy? kind of had that face...and he doesn't give me the finger but his face is really saying something like too bad lady...just too bad...and I know I told him when I got on his bus that I needed to get to PA...so he sees the bus go off without me but he's not about people making their connections...and all afternoon he's rolling by and I'm seeing him for three hours and I'm thinking he's mean...so then I ask another bus driver, t his one looks like Fidel, the guy I bought my other house from, a Basque is Fidel...red in the face, corny haircut, runs a Shingle mill in Amanda Park, all about the dollars, is fidel..but he's successful and here's his lookalike driving a transit bus and I ask this guy, well, I guess he looks rather like an Older Treat Williams too, I say is there any way to make some sort of connection to get on the number eight to Sequim so I don't have to sit here all afternoon waiting for another one? and this guy goes...no, there isn't...and I go...well darn it all anyway...and so I go back to sitting there which is all I can do because I've read my book for the trip...my things are too cumbersome to walk around port townsend with and that's all there is to it...I'll have to wait for three hours...because the bus I wanted to get on pulled out right in front of me and my bus driver let it go...I didn't know it was a number eight or I would have ran screaming after it, which I kind of did but he was too close to MacDonald's to hear me...and I didn't go Macdonalds because I didn't have any spare money for any burgers or anything. I did have some lunch along, I ate an apple, I drank my lemon water, I finished my other burrito...I hadn't packed any dessert other than the apple but I wasn't really hungry. I was trying really hard not to be angry with the William Macy dude...but I wasn't having too much luck with that.
Ok, then things got more strange. Three o'clock came. Number Eight to Sequim finally showed up. Well, lookit who's driving number eight. It's the Fidel wannabe...he's been on another route, oh no, there was no number eight showing up at the transit center for three hours but then here's the Fidel character and HE's driving it. Or is it the older Treat Williams wannabe? One of the two or both, or maybe just a legman from the local mob...I dunno...maybe they keep the teamsters in line like this...who knows... This guy, what does he tell me when I get on his bus? Oh you know what he says...and real friendly and warm while he's doing it...'sorry you had to wait all afternoon for your bus'...and I can't help myself that I'm sarcastic with him, "sure you are'I tell him...but he's stepping on the gas and we're pulling out of the transit center finally, oh finally, leaving Port Townsend, so I don't think he hears me and that's just as well becaue it never pays to be rude to people who are driving you anywhere, they tend to get a little bombastic with the steering...
ahemmm....
so, rolling down the road I don't see the hot air balloons over Sequim that I noticed leaving town, but they're still there I am told. I don't talk much to the Treat Williams guy, he's bad karma in my book because I don't see how they'd give him the three o'clock run on number eight when he's been going everywhere else the earlier part of the afternoon. We get into Sequim and there's a small layover for the commuter to Port Angeles. I first use the restroom then I take my heavy bags and walk around the block with them. I realize half way around that this is too heavy what I'm carrying and so I take a short cut through a vacant yard with a rickety wooden fence behind which there is a great big dog. The great big dog is booming at me, barking with an ominous tone that spells doom if he happens to push over the fence and gnaw off one of my shins, which happens a lot anyways, my shins are pretty well scarred. I get through the vacant lot, find a warm spot in the sunshine, set down my bags. And then here comes the bus to town. I pay my all day transfer fee and get my flourescent green numbered sheet of paper. I don't need to use it for a bookmark today because my boook is finished, I've read it. I clip it together with a bobby pin, put it in my pocket. We leave the transit center and the ride to port angeles is begun. I'm thinking every time the bell rings to allow a passenger to depart, the minutes are ticking away and my connection for the Clallam Bay bus is growing that much more slim in possibility. Two unwed mothers and baby get on, hand each other cash, talk on their cell phones. A guy with half blonde hair half black hair gets on and falls asleep immediately on his backpack in his lap. I'm sitting in the front seat before the cargo bin where my bags are. We roll into Port Angeles after macking serveral passenger stops and I'm ready to chew my nails with anxiety. I see the bus marked "FORKS" and I think 'yeah!' it hasn't gone yet. I quickly pick up my luggage and cross the street. I climb onto the bus and sit down in the first available seat which when the bus driver comes on board he tells me 'here comes a passenger with a walker, you'll have to move'...and I think, hmmm...all day long lugging that luggage, I need a walker...but I move and lo and behold...here comes walker lady and I really doubt she needs that walker for herself because what she has done is load up that walker with a pet carrier, groceries, a cardboard box with more stuff in it...and the bus driver rolls out the red carpet for her because they have this thing like an escalator that unfolds onto the sidewalk and a thing like a walker can just roll right up it, which is what the entirely huge lady does with her belongings all perched and piled on the walker. she gets the front seat I'd had and plops into with a huge 'flluuusssshhh' of air from the seat cushion and she nearly takes up two seats I don't recall that anyone sat with her although theymay have squeezed themselves in but they were doomed to fall into the aisle should we stop short because I don't think there was really any room for another passenger there.. Didn't look so to me anyway.
so this giant lady gets on board with all her stuff and some little kid saying goodbye to one of his split up parents is in front of her on the side sides and he asks about the creature in the pet carrier. "that's Shadow Ann' says the lady. I dn't know why I think that Shadow Ann is a cat,,I thought I heard someone say it WAS a cat but no matter...it's Shadow Ann, we all know that, because the giant lady has a gint voice. You can hear her over the roar of the engine, the open windows, she opens some more when she gts on because she can do that easily enough, although she needs the walker for sure...for the pet carrer with Shadow Ann in it...the kid is looking at the pet carrier and the cat inside, like I say, I thought it was a cat...and then this other kid comes on and he's saying he's going to see his mom in FORKS where he hasn't been in a w hile and he's got new school shoes and he puts them on to show the other kid what he got from his dad...'my mom doesn't have a job right now' he says to the kid ...and then we're off and away and we get out of Port Angeles and we're hearing about shadow Ann and what she bought her son and her husband who is her husband again and somewhere past Lake Crescent the new shoes kid asks the other kid did he far? and the kid looks at Shadow Ann's pet carrier and he goes shaking his head seriously back and forth 'that wasn't me'...that was HIM! and he points at the carrier and the bus driver looks up into his rear view and he goes 'DID THAT CAT poop on my BUS??' and the big lady goes 'yes in fact HE DID!' which is really confusing me because I'm thinking Shadow Ann is no doubt afemale cat...but then the lady says she needs some towels some lysol spray and somewhere in there Shadow Ann is allowed to roam free while she cleansup the foul smelling substance in the Pet Carrier and the bus driver has her open, or someone like another male passenger I forget who did this, the escape hatch at the ceiling at the front of the bus and windows are opened and the place smells bad until the lysol takes over a little and we're gtting back to normal I think and then all of a sudden there is a squirming at my shins...always getting a beating shins...something like a gigantic rat and I let out a loud 'ACKKKKKK!' like I've been goosed majorly...and here comes this little pint-sized chihuahua looking at me with his bald eyes and knowing he's startled me and I see him and I look at the back of the head of the giant lady and I start to laugh at the sound of my own goosing sqwawk...he's not a cat and he smelled up the bus and he's escaped and so I have to pick him up because he's crawled up my leg and I hand him off to the person in front of me which I guess was the other passenger in that seat because I know I didn't hand him to the giant lady...she was kind of on my nerves from the time she rolled in with that walker all loaded with her stuff and not her using it to assist her walking and maneuvering.
So I'm still laughing when I get off the bus at Sappho to transfer to the clallam bay bus. I don't tell anyone about shadow ann...the thing that I laugh about is how I screamed when that dog came climbing up my leg...it was as though a giant rat had been set free on top of the bad smell and there's this giantlady sitting in front of me and she's been talking all the way there about a CAT named shadow ann and a chihuahua turns up instead. I didn't know what became of the little dog...I got off the bus and hoped I wouldn't have to ride with that lady again...I knew the moment I saw her we were all in for it and we were...
No comments:
Post a Comment