Why I Stopped Taking the Bus

I haven’t written in so long that I don’t even know how to begin this post, so I’ll just get into it. [You pretend I never left, and I will pretend to be a whirlwind of creative ideas who doesn’t have a twenty five page philosophy paper due next week.]

So I stopped taking the bus to class. I told myself all winter that the only reason I take the bus up the treacherous hills to class is to avoid frostbite and to conserve my energy like a bear in hibernation. I was lying.

I take the bus because who the heck wants to get up early and use their actual legs to go 5,280 feet uphill multiple times a day? Not me that’s who.

But last week the birds were chirping and the sun was shining, and yet again I was jogging to get to the bus stop on time. Sweat dripping down my red face, heart beating faster than a kid at Chuck E. Cheese, I watched the glorious chariot of the lazy whiz by. EIGHT MINUTES EARLY.

It wasn’t fair. I was there on time. How could they leave without me?

And then I realized that it was spring, and if I was a bear I would have woken up by now, so I winked up at heaven where I could hear a giggle.

Then came the hill.

The hill to my class is no joke. I’m talking Kilamajaro here. But I looked up the hill with only fifteen minutes until my class began, shoved my headphones in and pressed “play.” One foot in front of the other, I trudged up the hill like the hunchback of Notre Dame. (I’ve only seen the VHS cover because I don’t watch horror films, but I know I looked like him that’s for sure.)

I prayed for gravity to remain for just a few more minutes to keep me from falling off the earth, and Sia’s words really hit my heart strings:

♫”Party girls don’t get hurt
Can’t feel anything, when will I learn
I push it down, push it down”♫

I pushed my thighs down pushed my thighs dooowwnnn.

With my headphones in, I was in another world climbing this hill as fast as possible, as if my life depended on it. I was breathing so heavily as I passed the Catholic church, that I mistook the cardboard cut-out inside the window as the real Pope Francis, and I gave him a sweaty wink.

Suddenly, I noticed a shadow on the sidewalk beside me. Somebody, God bless ’em, was stuck behind me and my fitness journey. I moved over to the side of the path to let them pass, and let me tell you he must have been a super human athlete because I did not see a drop of sweat on that guy and he didn’t sound like he needed an inhaler either. I could tell that he had a resting heart rate of 35, and you could hear my heart beating like some fortelling drum in the distance. I pretended to be humming along to my music, but really it was like one of those illuminati SOS messages hidden in a song (like in SpyKids): ♫”Help me, I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down, won’t open my eyes”♫

As soon as he passed [with judgement] I keeled over and wheezed, with a mirage of the bus in the sky. I heard that little ditty about a Crazy Bus from Arthur ringing in my ears, as I stared up at the big red bus with the driver throwing me a peace sign like Nixon post-watergate.

Ah, the glorious bus. Driver with creepy ponytail…Seats that all face the middle so that you have to make eye contact with strangers right across from you…packed in like sardines because no one else likes to walk…crowds that hoard around you as you try to get off so that they can get on…pushing and shoving…weird smells…

And that’s when I realized that the bus isn’t that great after all, and I was at the top of the hill. Vision blurring, armpits dripping to form a puddle under my chair, with a smile I was in class — ten minutes early. 😉

Like when a mother has a baby and forgets all the pain from childbirth, I decided that maybe the hill wouldn’t be so painful next time.

And that’s why I stopped taking the bus. That, and I’m gonna get killer calves.

If you have any hills you need climb, I urge you to do so! Unless your bus takes you more than a mile, in that case, take the bus.