An Ode to Public Transportation

I know I just posted about five minutes ago, but I couldn't let today go without some sort of commemmoration. A little background: I go to church very, very far away from where I live. It can take anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours to get there, taking first the tube, then a bus, then another bus, and then the tram. Every single week, something happens that is new and exciting. For example, that first week we tried to take the train, which meant we took a scenic two-mile walk to church from the train station. That next week, when we needed to find an alternate way, our trip director had never even heard of our ward. I should have taken that as a bad omen.

From then on, it's been something different every week. Either it was the time that the bus just stopped running about a mile before the stop we needed, or the time we accidentally got off the bus about five stops too early because we weren't paying attention. One week a group of three male tourists asked to take a picture with us and one week it cost us £1.10 just to walk through a train station (GRRR!). You make think the stories would stop there, but no, they keep coming. One week, the line with out stop on it just never came, so we had to take a very creative route home. Yet another week, we had our bus driver chase down our connecting bus (as I've already told you about). Every so often, my friend Heather does something hilarious like walk into a pole or throw away her ticket. But today, friends, today beat them all.

It started out uneventfully enough, but that was soon to change. As we got off the Tube to catch our first bus, Heather realized that the bus was already at the stop so she darted out into oncoming traffic to try to stop the bus. The ploy worked, but the day just got stranger. After we got off the second bus, I was waiting at the tram station with Tasha while Heather went to the bathroom. Now, I have to give you some background on what I looked like today. It is freezing! So, in addition to a long-sleeve brown sweater and a long tan corduroy skirt, I was wearing my big puffy tan corduroy coat, zipped up and with my hood on. To make matters worse, I was wearing navy blue track pants under my skirt and big clunky black shoes. Yeah, I looked pretty hideous.

So, imagine me, a tan corduroy fashion-challenged Eskimo, waiting at the tram stop. This 30-year-old African man came up to me at Tasha and asked if he could talk to me. I just assumed he wanted directions, so I said sure. Then, he turned to Tasha, and asked HER if he could talk to me. This was when I got an inkling that it was a strange situation. Then, he started talking about how he fancied me and wanted to get to know me better. I was so freaked out! I just kind of told him that I was about to go to church, so sorry, I wasn't interested. He was hurt, and was all like " Fine, you don't even want to know why I wanted to talk to you." So, we walked quickly away and got on the tram, but then when we got off, he was right in front of us. When he turned around and saw us, he just started running away. Weird. What grade do I get for that, Ana?

In addition to this experience, I nearly sat up into a metal bar, Heather walked straight past the ward building, and we ran down the platform at the tube stop just so we would be closer to the exit. Boy, did people look at us funny! Words cannot express how excited I am to come home to uneventful transportation.