taking the bus (part 2)

here i ride the bus a lot, usually twice a day. occasionally more than twice a day if i come home and then go to the store or something like that. we all got bus cards soon after we got here, and with the bus card it costs 1.6 RMB to ride the bus each time (something like 25 cents). i know the numbers of three different busses that i can take from school to my house. and there is another bus to take to get to the grocery store i go to sometimes, and that bus also goes downtown. when i went to stuff mart (see last post), i also learned that one of the busses i take to school sometimes goes directly to stuff mart in the other direction, so that's good to know. i also learned another bus that goes from school and drops off at macdonalds fairly near where i live. and this is where the story starts, because we decided to go to macdonalds for dinner tonight after leaving school.

so we got on this bus that one of the girls knew stopped in front of macdonalds. it was around 5:30, which is the time of day when all the busses are slower because of traffic. we were walking up to the bus stop when the bus we wanted pulled up, so we ran for it. it was good that about 20 people were getting on the bus, and the driver had to wait for them to get on, otherwise we may not have made it there in time. =) (i've had busses zoom right past the bus stop when i'm not quite to the bus stop because no one is standing there waiting, and once they get past it, there's nothing you can do! they don't stop unless someone is there and clearly moving towards getting on the bus.) so this bus was crowded also. we had a great conversation as the bus made its way through traffic. 5 minutes later, we realized the bus had moved from the bus stop to the gate of the school...not very far. eventually we got farther though. =)

anyway, we had a great conversation but were startled out of our conversation when the bus made a series of jerky movements. before i finish this, there are a couple pictures you need to see. here a view of the window of a front of a bus. you can only see half of the front window in this picture. maybe this gives you an idea of how wide this bus is. these busses are also long. note: these busses are significantly large. and as a side note, maybe you can see all the bikes and scooters in the middle of the street that are turning left.


this next pictures was also taken from a bus and kind of shows the size of the street, but does show the bike & scooter lane pretty clearly. look at the previous picture again to maybe get an idea for the size of the street in comparison to the scooter lane. and in this picture, as another side note, notice it very clearly points to the scooter/bike lane as such on the blue sign. you may also see the "no bugle" sign above that that really means "no honking horns." i see these signs a lot but apparently they mean nothing. :D especially certain bus drivers enjoy laying on their horn at the slightest opportunity.
anyway, the main point of these pictures is for you to note the size of the bus if possible, and the size of the bike/scooter lane. now, i was saying that the bus began to make a series of jerky movements. looking out the window we saw that the bus driver (apparently in an attempt to avoid the lines of cars in front of us and to discontinue the pattern of getting stuck behind cars behind red lights) had begun to *turn into the scooter lane*. yes. that big (very big) bus was in the scooter lane. but he was kind of stuck in the turn between the two curbs, pretty much exactly like the place you can see to enter the scooter lane in the picture above. he actually began to try to *back up* this giant bus. i imagined about 50 scooters behind the bus honking at him (it was "rush hour" after all), but of course couldn't see behind the bus at all because it was so full. we start to see scooters passing our bus on the sidewalk next to the scooter lane (see above again). finally the bus driver tries to go forward again and makes it. so we're careening down the scooter lane with barely any extra room on either side (and at least passing a long line of cars in the process...thankfully there aren't really any scooters in the scooter lane at this time--they're either on the sidewalk or still behind us, i guess). the bus stops at a bus stop...but on the back side of the bus stop. people are peering around the billboards that separate the bus stop benches from the scooter lane. no one got on the bus (haha...did they think, "this bus is crazy and it's full of people...i'll wait"?). we made it to macdonalds very shortly after this as it was the next stop.

through this whole "driving the bus in the bike lane" episode, we're just looking at either incredulously. what is there to say? our bus is driving in the bike lane.

(the feeling of being in the midst of this story is pretty similar to the street cleaner story.)