Riding the Madison Metro is often a terrifying experience.
Perhaps terrifying is too strong of a word; let me try again. Riding the public bus in Madison requires equal parts awareness, balance, mouth breathing, averted gazes and scowling.
Being aware of your surroundings is key due to the high volume of insane people who will join you on your excursion around the city. The good news is this makes for a highly entertaining—if not slightly frightening—ride.
For instance, there was my experience just last weekend on the seven, where I overheard an increasingly heated discussion with a man and someone on his phone. The spat culminated with him yelling, “Don’t call my parole officer!” Those are generally the words I want to hear coming from the person sitting mere feet from me.
Having some semblance of hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes is also key when riding the Metro. If you’re standing, you must be braced to reach for the nearest pole, seat, person, etc. lest you come toppling down upon the stranger next to you. Try as you might, it will never look smooth when the bus starts moving and you trip your way up the steps to the back seats while everyone stares at you.
Even preparing to depart the bus can make for a precarious situation. Think it’s come to a full stop? NOPE. That’s just a slight pause to trick you into standing only to send you careening back into your seat and accidentally slapping the person next to you as it jolts forward in one bonus burst. (Not that I’m speaking from experience (Except that’s exactly what I’m doing).)
I won’t say much on mouth breathing aside from, “Do it.” Trust me, there is no circulation on this enclosed rectangle and a full day of Lord-knows-who passengers does not make it the cleanest or freshest of locations.
When you think about it, the bus is set up for awkward situations. Who thought it was a good idea to make two randomized sections of seats facing each other? Were these seats created so friends could sit and chat on their jaunts across town? That’s what coffee shops are for. Nobody talks to others on the bus. Nobody.
Yet more often than not, I am faced with the decision to sit next to someone who looks like they haven’t showered in a week or across from a shifty-eyed stranger. Usually I opt for the uncomfortable across-the-aisle seat and avert holding gazes.
Normally I’m big on eye contact, but when sitting across from a stranger you cannot look up. One time I tried giving a half-hearted smile to the person facing me and they moved. They literally got up and SWITCHED SEATS. No one even wants you to look at him or her on the bus—they just want to get to their destination.
This is where the scowling comes into play, because though I don’t think I look creepy enough to merit making someone so uncomfortable they move to a different seat, I can empathize with the situation to some degree. It’s not fun feeling an intense gaze settling on your face. Sometimes the gazes are angry. Ergo, sometimes I get off a stop early.
By the transitive property, you might think all of these unpleasant factors make riding the bus a truly miserable experience. And you would be right.
However, there is one redeeming quality of the bus in the form of the drivers. It doesn’t happen all the time, but occasionally, you can end up with a good one. My favorite occasion to date happened on one of the sunnier Fridays this semester.
I had missed my usual bus to work and hopped on a random one heading in the right direction. By the time I neared my destination other people had cleared out and all that remained was the driver and myself. Somehow, we struck up a conversation and, skip ahead a few minutes, my trip ended with this guy singing “Friday” by Rebecca Black. True story.
It may be smelly, full of oddballs and require a drier version of sea legs, but I like to think that one day I will look back on my experiences riding the Madison Metro with a certain degree of fondness. Or maybe that’s just some of the crazy rubbing off on me. You really can’t be sure.
Want to ride the Madison Metro with Jaime so she doesn’t have to try and avoid old shift-eyed anymore? E-mail her at jbrackeen@wisc.edu, and be sure to bring a bag of cheese puffs—metro riders love them some cheese puffs.
