Entries Tagged 'Personal Stories' ↓

Guide dogs & TriMet - you see an occasional rider with one.  The dogs, themselves, are always obedient and not distracted (which every guide dog SHOULD be).

Read a story over at the Courageous Heart about a woman and her guide dog… and it’s written as a day in the life of an individual with a guide dog riding the bus & MAX.  And I have to say, seems like it’s always a fun (yet eventful) adventure.

My fiancee’s sister trains dogs… and downtown Portland, Oregon is a popular training ground for guide-dogs.  There’s even a guide dog campus located in Boring.

Definitely worth a read - it’s a really well-written story.

See? There are kind & courteous people on the TriMet bus and MAX. fyberduck over at the qfa reminds us that, while public transportation does have its share of… rude & some people doing disgusting things… there are some good folks riding.

One of her stories:

“This morning, as I traversed the deep and murky waters of public transportation, a young mother with a toddler and itty-bitty baby got on the bus. There weren’t any seats in the front (not that anyone were going to give up, anyway), so she made her way to the back of the bus. I noticed that the seat across the aisle from me was empty, so I jumped up and intended to offer her my seat so her son could sit opposite her. Well, apparently this wasn’t just my idea. The man opposite scooted over, the man next to me got up, and we all managed to rearrange ourselves neatly by the time the family got to our bench that they could sit down without a fuss.”

Good stuff… thanks for sharing!

Spotted this post over at the Pop Misery Blog about how that blogger has been taking public transportation more lately. And he brings up a good point:

“The really nice part of commuting to work this way is it gives me a chance to take in the nature that can be found on the sidewalks and the sides of the roads.”

Very cool! I find the several block-walk to and from the MAX station / bus stop to be a nice little ‘break’ in my busy life. And cool picture of the little creature!

Oh happy day! Last night I finally had some MAX train fare inspectors on my MAX train for the first time in about… almost a year or so.

I was really happy to see them because:

• I’ve only seen them on late night trains
• I was wondered how many people actually bought fare on the ‘busy’ times (from 7:30 - 8:30 am and 5 - 6 pm)

They checked our fare (it took them awhile, but they got around to it before we hit the Gateway station) and wrote up several tickets.

Anyway, just very psyched to see some fare inspectors on and checking fares. I hope that this signals an increase in frequency of having fare inspectors on the MAX and also having them board different times of the day. Keep it up…

TriMetiquette reader Kevin used the contact form to get ahold of me to let me know of something that bothers him:

“I wish people wouldn’t put their feet up on the seats on the Max and buses. It’s posted not to put your feet on the seats but people ignore the signs. Sort of like how people don’t pay any attention to the “no smoking” signs. The seats frequently get very dirty because people keep putting their feet up. It’s so rude.”

Here here!  Like we discussed earlier, putting your feet up on the seat not only is just plain rude… but it dirties up the seat.  Does it look like I want to sit in the dirt & mud from your shoes?

Justin over at neverbeencool wrote a long blog post about breaking his streak of 49 days without coffee, Kashi goLEAN & the width of a TriMet max seat. Turns out the width is probably around the average for a plane’s seat… which ranges from 17 - 18 inches wide. He goes on:

“Or rather, on me. Because that’s really all there’s room for. If you’re the same size as me or wider, and you aren’t willing to spill out into the aisle, you will not fit without crushing me against the wall or sitting my lap. And either of those are likely to make me wanna shank a bitch.”

Gotta say, I lawled when I read that section 

TriMetiquette reader Kristin sent me this story:

Kristin notes: face has been cutout to protect identity

Most riders are conscious of this unspoken etiquette: keep the volume low (conversations, music, drunk ramblings, etc.) and respect the almighty SILENCE.

It’s 5:30pm on Tuesday evening and I’m taking bus #12 home from Downtown. It’s the end of the workday, people are tired and we all want to enjoy a few minutes of solitude before we get off the bus and have to get back to the demands of our lives.

The bus is at full capacity; every seat is taken and people are standing so close to one another that I can smell my neighbors’ lunch on his breath. Fortunately, we can all keep our cool. Upon entering this bus, each of us vowed to respect thy neighbor by maintaining a code of silence.

Just as the bus is taking off, heading over the Burnside bridge, I hear a woman talking loudly – almost yelling – ‘Come on damn it, it’s Earth Day – smile! What the hell’s wrong with everyone.’ She proceeds to look at the people sitting to the left & right of her, gets up in their face and says ‘Why aren’tcha smiling? COME ON SMILE!’ People are looking away from her in hopes they will be spared from the rude awakening.

I can appreciate wanting to spread a little cheer. It would do us good to smile a bit more. Being rude & overtly loud certainly didn’t make me smile; in fact, it turned my smile upside down.

Read an interesting story over at behindheadfones.  An intriguing story, for sure.  I enjoyed it.

Not to go off on my little tangent, but writing short stories is a lot of fun.  Reading this one centered around the MAX & TriMet made me think about a short story I wrote while in college about a “professional rock collector.”   And I’m not really big into geology or anything…

Thanks for sharing your story…

Hey, you didn’t know?  MAX operators need to go to the bathroom too!  But when they’re transporting us from Gresham to Beaverton or Beaverton to Gresham (or anywhere in between), when are they able to go to the bathroom?

Well, a TriMet light rail operator has an interesting story about her most recent journey of having to hold it in.  And I gotta say, it’s a pretty funny story.  And honestly, not something I really thought of before… at work, I have the luxury to go ‘relieve’ when I feel the need to.  When you’re commandeering a light rail train… that’s a different story.

Anyway, too funny and definitely a blog I’ll be keeping an eye out on.  She has a nice writing narrative and, judging by how much I enjoyed a story about her putting her bladder “to the ultimate test”, I’ll probably enjoy more of her stories.

Had to share this crazy (unlucky!) story about John & his friends taking the MAX (or at least trying to) down to a Portland Trailblazers game. A couple of highlights from his unfortunate night:

• Plugged “$15″ into the ticket machine at the Gateway transit center only to discovery that the MAX was dead and that they would have to take a bus to get to the Rose Garden
• Took 40 minutes for them to get to 7th and Halladay from Gateway on a bus that was apparently manned by a driver who “was not familiar with this part of Portland, much less navigating narrow streets to transport a sardine stuffed bus from one MAX station to the next.”
• Then on the way home: “There was a brief moment when the entire bus gasped as the metal scraped across the concrete and made a ssssssssssccccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeecccccccccccccccchhhhhhh! and the bus tipped violently to the left then right as the tires went over the islands.”

Wow! Out of control! The one takeaway I have from that whole post is:

“But, I want to put the blame for the adventure we were about to begin on the helpful and courteous TriMet employees who were wandering around the Gateway station. They could have interrupted us when we were plugging $15 into the ticket machine to tell us that MAX was dead and that we and several hundred of our fellow passengers would soon be jammed into a bus and sent bumping around narrow surface streets between MAX Stations.”

That sucks!  Well, better luck next time…