From Work - 11.28

Well, that was an interesting evening. First off, one of the downfalls of either riding the bus or working in advertising is you work late a lot of nights. Then you have to make the decision of leaving work to catch your bus and getting a guilt trip from the office, or staying late to finish more of your unending workload and risk a later ride home. I chose the former option. I've had plenty of girlfriends give me guilt trips so I'm used to that, and the bus makes a nice excuse to get out at a reasonable hour. Lets just hope I can finish up the rest of those projects tomorrow.

So, I went over to the bus stop by The Garden Club on Riverside (because it has a bench) and caught the R5 again at ten before six.

Something weird happened one stop before the Central Hub. The bus stopped there for something like ten minutes. Just waiting out cycles of the stoplight with the doors open. I don't know why. Maybe we were early? Just seemed weird to me.



When we did pull up to the Central Hub there was a truck with flashing lights and a whole section taped off. My first instinct was "Oh, great, some crime scene or something." But it turns out they were just cleaning the bus stop. Why they do that at rush hour I have no idea. A little part of me still wants to fantasize some dramatic Hollywood murder/mystery moment just went down and they were covering it up. But we'll give Jacksonville the benefit of the doubt, and judging from the nonchalance of the cleaning crew and bystanders they were probably just cleaning the gum out of the brick.

So, I waited out another 15 minutes and got on the R1 back out to the beach. On the way over the Mathews the driver turned on the windshield wipers. This was perplexing as I'd checked the weather that morning and was told there was only a 10% chance of rain.



This is when things really started to slow down. I typically take 95S to Butler Boulevard home when it's raining because I've found Jacksonville drivers to be a little over-cautious driving in the rain and JTB keeps things moving. Add to that a disabled van in the left hand lane of the Arlington Expressway and we've got some nasty slow rush hour traffic.

This was the first trip thus far I've gotten rather uncomfortable and antsy by the end. The plastic seats were just getting hard to get comfortable in and the "Stop Requested" voice was met in my head with a silent groan.

I finally got off the bus at 7:17PM and had to walk three blocks in the light drizzle. I guess I can't blame JTA for the weather, but I wish weather.com would have implied I needed to bring my umbrella.

As something else completely unrelated to the bus, I forgot my house key (which is on my car key ring) and my roommate was still at the office (he works in advertising too, and hasn't had enough guilt-giving girlfriends to deal with leaving on time) so I had to pretty much break into my own house. So, as another lesson learned, always bring your house key, even if you're not using your car.

Alright, enough for today. Back to watching Sunday's Chelsea v. Manchester United match I recorded on DVR.