Today marks the end of the second week of commuting from Fullerton to Culver City and I still haven’t figured this whole mess out. 
This morning something unusual happened. Norwalk 4 made it from Metrolink Station to the Green Line a couple minutes before 6:31AM, which means I caught an earlier train than usual. When I arrived at the Aviation/LAX stop, the rare Metro bus was waiting, the one I thought I’d be riding every day until I figured out the far more frequent Culver City 6 was a better choice. I rode it hoping it would get there even faster, but unfortunately it follows the exact same route as the Culver 6 which left the terminal at pretty much the exact same time.
That got me to Fox Hills Mall at a few minutes after 7:20. I stayed there hoping a Crosstown 3 would show up earlier but it didn’t and I ended up taking the normal one. I should have walked
Coming home I managed to leave right on time but the often annoyingly early Culver 6 showed up a few minutes late. While waiting I took the time to examine a large map of the entire Metro system and made a discovery–there’s a bus that winds around from Union Station all the way down to Disneyland, stopping at the Norwalk Green Line, and at the Fullerton Metrolink and near the Buena Park one as well. Finally, a life vest!
A life vest that I am wearing as I write this, but I get ahead of myself. The Culver 6 made good time and I merely had to spend less time waiting at the Green Line platform. In Norwalk, however, I was surprised for the second day in a row with Norwalk 4 not showing up at all.
Rather upset at yet another day of a completely absent Norwalk 4, which I am now nicknaming “weakest link”, I called Norwalk Transit. Apparently some road is torn up that’s delaying the buses (or cause them to disappear down a black hole) and it’ll be that way for a couple of weeks.
Thankfully, I had just discovered the life raft. It’s a cumbersome, well worn beast that’s packed and smells horrible. It also didn’t arrive at a time that resembled anything like any of the numbers on the time table. Getting on I see why, half the people boarding were obviously from Orange County and didn’t know how to pay a fare, and it seems popular with handicapped passengers. It’s a bus to Disneyland, so as a matter of course I’m sharing it with a dubiously disabled overweight woman whose electric scooter is adorned with insane levels of Disney paraphinalia. I’ve also eavesdropped on a conversation that went from a shockingly lightheartedly told tale of someone’s entire family getting shot at that then moved on to landlord drama, and a boy bumping into his spiritual mentor and getting life advice and inspirational quotes. Another lady is swearing a lot and it sounds like in the back someone is having a lover’s quarrel over what must be a cell phone because I can only hear one side of the conversation.
I realized today that I think my fascination with public transit is rooted in how much I enjoy the people, and cheesy as it sounds, the “connection with humanity”. Hopefully though I won’t have to ride the smelly life raft too often.