Yet Another Travel Misadventure Story

In my latest adventure, I visited five cities in three states in ten days. My first stop was Chicago, Illinois, and to get there I took the bus, which sounds innocuous enough until we remember that this is me we’re talking about. One of my many talents is being plagued with every sort of travel delay possible, except not normal things like refueling or flat tires. No, I find myself waiting at the bus stop or stuck on the tarmac for things like losing the deicer coin flip and stopping to look at a snake.

This time, my journey began at the bus stop. I decided to take the Ann Arbor bus system (AATA) instead of the U of M buses so I could get off at the transit center and directly transfer to my next bus instead of having to walk with my bags from another stop. I even checked to make sure I had more than one minute to transfer. A couple minutes after I arrived at the bus stop, I saw a bus pass by on the opposite site of the road. Well, I thought, worst case scenario is that I have to wait for that bus to loop around the end of the route and come back to pick me up. A few minutes later, I went to the AATA website to track my bus. The site said the next bus was coming in less than ten minutes.

For the next ten minutes, the site kept telling me that the next bus was arriving in ten minutes. Finally, I stopped checking for a few minutes and watched to see if the bus was coming at its scheduled time after all. Sometimes the site is wrong. The next time I checked, the next arriving bus was updated to the bus scheduled after the bus I was waiting for. The bus I saw on the other side of the road had disappeared from the tracking site. I spent the next twenty minutes waiting for the bus, but I wasn’t that concerned. Yet. When the bus eventually arrived, the driver careened through the streets of Ann Arbor trying to make up a half hour delay on a ten minute ride.

I got off at one end of the transit center and walked over to the other side to catch my transfer. The bus was already there, but the driver wasn’t. As I was standing there waiting for the driver to arrive, I realized that my rain jacket, which I had slung over my messenger bag, was gone. I retraced my steps hauling my backpack, a messenger bag, and a sleeping bag, unsure if I left the jacket on the bus or it slipped off while I was walking around the transit center. When I rounded the corner around the building, I could see my jacket waving in the wind. The driver had helpfully hung it on a post. I went and grabbed my jacket, double knotted it to the strap of my bag, and circled back around the building. Thirty seconds later, the bus driver showed up, let everyone onto the bus, and drove off.

The last time I took a bus to this area of Ann Arbor, I missed my stop. This time, I watched every stop closely and got off at the correct stop. My next task was to find the pickup point for the bus to Chicago. The email said that we were boarding at parking lot pylon fifteen. I gazed over the vast expanse of the parking lot and located the nearest pylon. In large, clear numerals, it said fifty-eight. In disbelief that I could be forty-three pylons away from the bus, I peered into the distance and saw pylon six. I figured that had to be nearer than fifty-eight, so I started dragging all my things in that direction. As I approached pylon fifteen, I saw no sign of the bus, but there were other people waiting with luggage, so at least I hadn’t missed the bus.

It showed up on time; I lugged all my things on and spent the next four and a half hours in transit to Chicago. We arrived at the precise minute listed on our tickets.

Chicago River and buildings