The wheels on the bus

I love the bus. I hate the bus. This is the dilemma.

I'm really starting to get the hang of mass transit and I'm learning more and more that, for the most part, I prefer the L to the bus. If there aren't many people on the bus and it doesn't creep and crawl along State Street (for example), I prefer the bus, but that doesn't seem to be happening lately. Plus there was incident yesterday that troubled me deeply.

We were moving so slowly south on State when a guy across the aisle started yelling at the bus driver. I really wasn't paying attention to what he was saying but a woman (she was probably in her late 60s/early 70s) said something back to him. He then let her have it verbally, starting swearing at her, made abusive comments about her age. And we all just sat there.

I don't really know what to do in those situations. This was a really big guy who was really belligerent and was also taking big swigs of beer while all this was going on. Do you stand up for the woman and incur his wrath? Tell the bus driver? He had to be hearing this. Or just do nothing and hope the woman isn't scarred by this incident. She didn't seem to be, but it really ticked me off and I wanted to get in this guy's face, which probably wouldn't have solved anything. Sigh. What would Jesus do, indeed.

Of course, I could also ride the L where just last Monday we got in and noticed that someone had vomited all over one of the seats.

Really wants to make you live in the city, no?