The Mythical Bus

Directions are not my forte. Navigation isn’t either. As a directionally-challenged individual, getting from place to place is often a cumbersome, anxiety-inducing task. That being said, I tend to keep my distance from public transportation–and, in particular, the bus system. I believe the busses and I have a mutual dislike for each other, which seems to have resulted in our unspoken decision to avoid one another at all costs. Wherever I am, the bus is not; and wherever the bus happens to be at any given moment, I most definitely won’t be anywhere near.

Here at Eau Claire, there is an intricate network of buses that travels all over the city, from the mall to the Target to everywhere in between. And—as I was informed way late into my freshman year—there are apparently also buses that escort worn and weary students from lower to upper campus, evading the infamous beast that is…The Hill.

This revelation sent me into utter shock, considering that I had never once laid eyes on this fairy-tale campus shuttle. I had already spent several months on campus and walked up the hill an indecent amount of times before one of my friends notified me of her post-class rides back to the dorms via this free, motorized mode of transportation.

Pish posh.

A bus that took students up The Hill? There couldn’t be. What a ridiculous notion, that The Hill was merely an option, and nobody actually had to struggle-bus it (no pun intended) up its icy, slush-packed exterior. I refused to believe it.

And so, the aptly-named “mythical bus” was born.

This bus to me was no more than a mere concept—an idea. It had no real form or shape, but instead was just a fabrication created by delusional students who probably just wished there was an alternative form of transportation up the mountainous slope.

There came a day, however, that I decided to test my luck. I had injured my foot in a devastating treadmill accident (maybe that’s an exaggeration), and with the cold-snow-slush combination approaching peak discomfort levels, I thought there would be no better opportunity. So after class, I made my way to the out-of-site bus stop…which truthfully caused me to feel like I was taking part in some shady, black market business.

And I waited.

And waited some more.

Finally, after ridiculous amounts of time had passed, the glorious moment came when an actual bus pulled up alongside the curb. Knowing it was just too good to be true, I checked to make sure it was the one for the campus route. Sure enough, it was not. Murmurs erupted from the crowd of bus-riding “regulars” surrounding me, all obviously perplexed by the fact that the campus bus hadn’t yet arrived.

Well I didn’t have time to wait. I had an appointment to get to (for my suffering foot), and I couldn’t afford to stick around for some bus that probably didn’t even exist.

At that moment, I felt a little bit like Spongebob in the Rockbottom episode when he failed to catch the bus back home an endless amount of times. I sympathized with his plight and the desperation he must’ve felt when the thought of returning to his happy pineapple probably seemed like a lost cause.

Trudging up the hill defeated and fatigued, my bus relationship began its downward slide.

This semester, with that traumatic experience well behind me, I decided it was time to give the whole bus thing another chance. One weekend when my brothers came to visit, I was feeling particularly adventurous. For whatever reason, this equated to hopping on a bus and taking it to some unknown, spontaneous destination.

The first problem with this plan was that it involved deciphering the bus schedule. I may as well have been handed an ancient scroll of hieroglyphics because trying to interpret that thing was a nearly impossible task.

Long story short, my brothers and I did end up on a bus, even though it was several hours later and not at all on the one we originally intended to take.

…But details.

From the moment we stepped on, all three of us felt entirely out of place. I sensed tangible judgment taking place—the bus driver, the people on before us, and the people that boarded later all seemed to be giving us heavy stares of contempt and disapproval. I guess it was obvious to everyone that we were not bus people.

It was when the buststarted heading to upper campus and right back to my residence hall that I was hit with a turbulent wave of panic and defeat. After all that wasted time, we were now back to square one.

Luckily Sam was there as the voice of reason, suggesting that we might as well just stay on, ride it out, and see where we ended up.

And so off we were to the mall.

This may have been a fun destination had I not been lugging around an overly-stuffed backpack. So as soon as we exited that uncomfortable inner bus chamber, we marched across the sprawling lots to the Caribou across the street—a seeming beacon of light hailing us in from the dark and callous outside world.

We tumbled into the coffee shop like breached driftwood washing up on shore. It was well into the evening by this point, and our exhaustion levels were in desperate need of caffeine revival. Luckily, the entire day’s struggle was atoned for when one of my dorm’s RAs walked through the doors. It just happened to be the one person from my hall that my brothers—for reasons unexplained–have a weird obsession and fascination for (but that’s another story).  Basically, the boys were stoked, and the mood was restored to a happy, chipper state.

I’ll just say that it’s probably going to be awhile before I gather up the bravado to take part in that whole bus business again. Because, as everyone knows, there are some relationships that just aren’t meant to be.