extending the metaphor

When I last lived in England, I rode the 139 from my lovely little house in Chalk to the next-but-one village of Higham where I taught. (It's pronounced High-um and not Hig-um, btw.) The 139 was not the most reliable of buses. It had recently had its times cut and no one was happy with the change. It did provide an easy chit-chat opportunity. Everyone was dissatisfied with the scheduling and reliability of the new timetable. Apparently the 139 used to be very efficient and dependable. It used to run like clockwork. But that wasn't the case when the new timetable went into effect.

The 139 was scheduled to stop at the end of my street every half hour from 7:18 a.m. to 9:48 p.m. (It also ran hourly in the early mornings at 5:18 a.m. and 6:18 a.m. Can you imagine my joy when I needed to be at school early and had to catch the 6:18 A.M. bus? Not hard to imagine...) The biggest problem with the 139 was reliability. Especially during the morning hours it was common to have a bus running late or even not show up at all. If a driver didn't show up for work, then there was no bus. The problem was, there was no way to know if a bus was on time, late or skipped. So, each morning I'd arrive at the bus stop by 7:10 a.m. And I'd wait.

If my bus was skipped, I could still make it to school on time by catching the 7:48 bus. It was CLOSE, but do-able if everything ran smoothly and to schedule. The problem came when the 7:18 got skipped and the 7:48 was late. What to do, what to do?

At the top of my street and down a block on the main road, there was another bus stop. It was for another bus company. I don't know the number of that route, so you can see it wasn't familiar to be. It was rumored to stop near my school. When I needed to be at school and the 139 was critically late, I'd start wondering about heading up to the other bus stop. It was a dilemma! In true Murphy's fashion, the 139 would surely arrive as soon as I left for the other bus. (And, you can't psych out Murphy's Law and pretend to go. The Law knows. It can't be manipulated like that. You have to commit.) And, I didn't ride that other bus. I didn't know the schedule or where exactly I'd end up.

That's where I am right now in my long adoption process. The bus is incredibly late. I'm wondering if it's time to stop waiting for the 139 and take another bus. Everyone in Russia is on holiday right now. There are some questions that need to be answered here before I head up the street to the other bus stop. I wish there was a point halfway where I could stand and watch both buses and then dash for the one that comes first. However, not only is that not physically possible (bend in the road), but I'm not a runner. I'd miss them both.

And that is something I'm not willing to do.

(p.s. I'm tired of looking at that long timeline over in the sidebar and am thinking about deleting it. At the time, those seemed like milestones. And, I know it does help other people keep track of my convuluted, atypical ride... We'll see.)