So many things are going on in my life, all of a sudden it's been more than a month since I last posted! Unacceptable. A month of my life gone undocumented, uncommented upon.....when really, in 50 years, these will be the only memories I have of these times.
Part of the reason for the lack of communication has been the daily commute. For the last 2 years or so I had the commute some people could only dream of.....I walked to work and walked back, no need for any trains, plains, or automobiles....I had a stable job in downtown Los Angeles, knew I'd be working there for the entire year, and got an apartment for a year in downtown. Simple....why doesn't everyone do it? I thought. Not having to commute saves me up to 2 hours a day, I don't have to devote energy driving through horrendous traffic, I don't have to get up super early or stay super late to work to beat traffic, I don't have to be rushing to squeeze every second of the day in.
But then of course reality hits.........My job changed, my circumstances changed, my life partner also has her commute to worry about.........these are the things that go into getting a commute, and suddenly I had the unenviable position of traveling WEST into mid-city Wilshire and back every day. If people don't know L.A., Hollywood (and West Hollywood) is a very trendy place to get to, and right next to it is Farmer's Market, the Grove, LACMA (County Museum of Art), LaBrea Tar Pits, etc., lots of cool places down Wilshire Ave., but.......it's in a Bermuda Triangle of highways, no highway directly gets to it, and Wilshire Blvd.....well, is a mess. It's only 6 miles or so to my work (I feel like I could run there! The L.A. marathon's tomorrow and it's 26 miles!) but takes 50 minutes or so to get to, so like 8 minutes per mile. Seriously, that's a runner could beat me there on bus. There's a purple line subway coming, but only in 5 years, so what to do? There's a bus called the Rapid 720 that I've become intimately familiar with the last 2 months. There's a LOT of people who ride the bus to work, and I feel fortunate that in my life I haven't had to take the bus for long distances, because especially in L.A. there are some weird occurrences that take place on the bus. There's just 1 bus driver driving up to 100 people, so it's pretty much just the passengers enforcing each other. There are homeless people, criminal-looking people, space-invading people who take up 2 seats, singing people who sing to themselves, closely followed in weirdness by people who mutter to themselves, a fight that almost broke out between 2 passengers, always someone who is taking the bus for the first time and asks the driver a million questions taking up everyone's time, smelly guy on the bus (the bus never smells good and never smells clean, I bet they wash it once in a while but like the subway it's almost pointless as every time it goes back into circulation homeless people infest and make it smell bad again). It's just a long ride of bumps and smells.
Then there's the bus itself. Because of the nature of traffic, many times 3 buses will show up at one time because one bus got slowed picking everyone else up, one bus is right on time, and the last bus is early because they didn't have to pick anyone up. The buses themselves get cut off in traffic all the time even though there's a bus lane in Wilshire. SO frustrating when other buses pass the bus I'm in as I feel like life is literally passing me by. The buses are naturally kind of herky jerky with 3 sections of the bus connected together, so it's a "hang-on-for-dear-life" situation when the bus turns or jolts to a stop.
Anyway, I miss my 0.3-mile walking commute to work! But now I know what L.A. public transportation is like! I feel like a real Angeleno!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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