A very enjoyable ride last night

Last night I rode the MAX from downtown to my destination in Zone 3.  Now, I typically ride the bus these days due to the location of my work.  But I was downtown in the evening and hopped on a MAX to get home.

Gotta say, I had a very enjoyable ride.  Here are some of the things I had the pleasure to experience:

• Some kid, probably about 17, getting a call from someone he didn’t know, telling that individual that he’s going to “____ him up if he calls again” or, if he would like, come to his residence at any time (“I don’t care, it could be at 3 am!”) and he’ll kick his @ss.  Then he proceeded to tell the individual that he doesn’t sell crack, he only sells pills and weed.
• Some guy who accidentally dropped his skateboard a couple of times.  No biggie.  Except for the fact that every time he did, he had to yell out the f word.
• Some girls behind me, probably about 13 / 15 years old, telling their friend that they used to, for fun, ride the MAX from one end of the line to the other.  “Did you every get caught?”  “Nope.”

Why is it seemingly socially acceptable to act rude and disrespectful on public transportation?  Maybe I’m just getting old..

Top five reasons why public transportation stinks in hot weather

I’m not so sure you all know this… but it’s hot.  With the next several days predicted to hit 90 degrees, I do not look forward to hitting the bus during my rush-hour commute home.

So I thought hey, why don’t I like to ride public transportation in hot weather?  I’m going to get all David Letterman (“Got any gum?”) and present the top 5 reasons why public transportation stinks in hot weather:

5)  Air conditioning is really hit or miss.  Some buses will have fantastic air conditioning; others will seemingly be pushing hot air around.

4)  Summer means school is out. Which means teens riding at all hours.  Which means you’ll no doubt hear at least one person’s music even when his / her headphones are on.

3)  The biker that just got done biking several miles only to board to get up that hill in the bus is dripping in sweat and sitting right next to you.

2)  Hot weather only seems to agitate people. Which, in a crowded bus, never ends up being very fun.

And the number one reason why public transportation stinks in hot weather:

1)  Some individual’s ‘unique’ smell (B.O.) only gets more ‘unique’ as the weather gets warmer.

Anyone have any additional reasons why they don’t like riding during the hot summer months?  Or is it just me..?

TriMet App Center is live

Well lookie here!  TriMet now has an official App Center on their website.  From Andrew Wallace’s fantastic PDX Bus iPhone / iPod Touch app to Android, text message and web apps, this is a definite collection of TriMet applications.

I will say – TriMet’s stance on not linking to non-affiliated websites is in full force here, having text links in place while not actually linking to them.  Kind of weird, but whatever.

And seriously – if you’re an iPhone user, go grab the awesome PDX Bus app.

Your pick(s) for stop announcement voices

While I was reading up about the recent vote to change 39th avenue to Cesar Chavez Boulevard, I couldn’t help but think that TriMet will need to do some new recording for stops along the new CCB (hey, I kind of like that acronym). I wonder if any of the Portland City Council members thought about how much that might cost TriMet, an agency that’s making all kinds of cuts to save some money?

In any case, I was thinking about how we’ve been hearing the same voice calling out stops on the bus and MAX for quite some time now.  Why not change it up?  Why not get some celebrities to record their voices for stop announcements?  How awesome would that be?!

So here are a couple of picks that I would definitely like to hear saying “Old Town / Chinatown / Doors to my right”, “This is the last stop in Zone 2″ and so forth:

Bill Cosby

Maybe it’s just because I’m on a huge The Cosby Show kick right now, but Mr. Cosby’s voice announcing what stop it is would be pretty awesome.

Jerry Seinfeld

How awesome would it be to hear Jerry announcing stops?  Bonus if he could end it with a question mark:

“What’s the deal with 32th and Burnside? I mean, Music Millennium? Can I buy a CD that has music from 1,000 years ago?”

Drew Carey

Now that Mr. Carey is on The Price is Right, hey, come on down and why not record your voice for TriMet’s stop announcements?  Bonus if he could award points (“where the points don’t matter…” come on!  Who’s Line Is It Anyway!) to people getting at random stops.

Audrey Tautou (French language)

We have an English language stop announcement… even a Spanish one.  Let’s just throw in French so we can have the lovely Audrey Tautou give out stop announcement.

What are your picks for who YOU would like to hear give stop announcements?

Interesting parallel…

Was checking up on some morning news and had an article about Manny Ramirez in my RSS reader.  That, first of all, was strange simply because I’m not a huge baseball fan (sorry Beavers!) but I did see that apparently he got ejected last night from his first game back from a lengthy suspension.

So I opened the article up to skim it and I read an interesting quote from Manny about his reasoning behind his ejection from the game:

“I didn’t want to throw even more fire. I just walked away,” he said. “I only play five innings, so I was leaving anyway.”

Does that sound like anything we’ve recently heard about?  Oh, maybe someone saying something along the lines of:

“(Anderson) told the ticket inspector he ‘might as well go to jail‘ if he was going to get a citation”

Sure, we’re comparing a crime committed against a baseball player getting ejected from a game… but I thought it was interesting that seemingly the same mentality applied to both situations.