After over a month of religiously taking the bus to work, I had my first negative experience. It all started as I was winding down my day at work. I checked OneBusAway and my bus was set to arrive in 6 minutes. For those not in the Seattle area OneBusAway is a website/smartphone app that provides real-time data about where a Metro bus is on it's route. 6 minutes is tight for me to get from my office to the stop, but it's doable. So I hustled out the door.
As luck would have it I got held up at the two crosswalks I need to cross to get to the stop and before I knew it the 245 was screaming by. Oh well, the 245 runs every 15min so it's really no big deal I thought. So I check OneBusAway on my phone and something was up as the next bus was 27 minutes away, 12 minutes late. Since I had some time on my hands and it was Friday, I decided to take a stroll rather than head back in and work. So I walked down the street to get some exercise in the hopes of picking up the bus down the line.
I still don't know exactly what happened but that bus that was supposed to be there in 27 minutes ended up taking about a hour to show up. It was my most packed ride yet. I overheard the driver say he hit some traffic near crossroads, a local mall, when a fellow rider complained. Whatever the cause I was really late getting home.
As you can imagine showing up a hour late for dinner doesn't go over very well at home. For some being a hour late to work could mean losing a job. I'm lucky because my schedule has what most of the world would consider a lot of flexibility. If I wasn't so flexible, the bus would be a complete nonstarter.
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