Category: bus driver

We Don’t Go To The Parade

Yesterday my mom took off for a few hours. She wanted to go a few places where I am not allowed. I don’t mind being left in my crate. For one thing, I have my favorite kong toy. I’m near a window so I catch a breeze. Best of all, my mom feels so guilty after leaving me, she takes me on a long walk when she comes home.

Sure enough, yesterday afternoon, we walked over a mile to the dog park. By evening, the weather was cool and we both enjoyed the breeze from the sea. I ran around the park for awhile, until Mom realized a big parade was happening a block away.

I hate parades. All that buzzing and honking and shouting. Last year at Seafair they shot off a cannon and I almost shot through the roof. (Back then, I was still allowed in coffee shops. Another story.)

So I sat on my furry little butt and refused to budge.

We tried one block. Even Mom decided: “Too crowded! OK, Gracie, I’ve seen a high school band before.”

She began to have second thoughts, but I won that round.

We came to a bus stop. “Good! Now we can ride home,” I said, settling down to wait.

“Oh no,” Mom said. “The schedules are all screwed up with parade. We’ll get home faster if we walk.”

“Rrr.” No way.

Some nice people came by and said, “Oh look…The dog wants to wait for a bus! Isn’t that cute? The poor dog…”

I tried to look sad and pathetic. Such a mean owner! But it was hard to look sad when my fur is all shiny and fluffy from my professional bath (not to mention the gourmet food my mom orders).

We walked. And we walked. We were exhausted. But I still had energy to chase the cats around Cathy’s living room… especially that fat tabby who thinks she owns the place. If she were human, she would be old enough to vote. And she never lets us forget.

Smart People Ride Seattle Metro Buses

[My mom wrote this before I took over the blog]

Downtown in the ride-free zone, I hop on a bus for the library. The hill from Third to Fourth Avenue is dauntingly steep. If I’m on on the #2 — which stops right there — I’ve learned to get off earlier and walk or grab the first bus heading south on Fifth Avenue.

Today I’m on a bus with one of those mysterious three-digit numbers, which means he’s headed to an outlying area I’ve never heard of.

“Do you stop at Spring or Seneca?” I ask the driver.

“I stop at Spring.” He’s a tall, slim man with glasses, very friendly.

“Well, your sign says express, so I wondered…”

“The word express is a misnomer,” he says. “Downtown everybody’s a local.”

“Misnomer? Did you say misnomer? Are you a moonlighting graduate student?”

He laughs. Earlier he did indeed get a graduate degree in one of the language study areas, but he’s been driving for sixteen years, he tells me. He likes the job. It’s a bad job to hate, he says. You have to like it.

“I’d be a truck driver myself,” I say, “if I were a better driver. But I don’t like driving in the rain, or on bridges or tunnels.”

“Truck driving? Too much time away from home,” he says, and we wave good-by as I get off, right in front of the Fifth Avenue entrance to the library.