Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Express yourself

It was an early morning run on the 114 Express from the BB&T Center to Civic Center. There was a calm yet uneasy glow in the darkness of those predawn hours, a shadowy half-illumination from an unseen source. While deadheading to my start point, my leader was on the radio with bus problems but this was quickly resolved and things were back on track.

"Did you see the moon?" one of my regulars asked while we stood on the platform waiting for our departure time. She was excited about the full moon, and I had a moment of disappointment since I'm a big fan myself and hadn't yet seen it. A heavy cloud cover had obscured it earlier, though some of its pale light had escaped to dimly color the landscape.
"No! I was looking for it on the way here but couldn't see it."
She went on about its grandeur though I had to take her word for it since the clouds had moved back in and there was no trace of our pock-marked satellite. At some point a glint caught my eye, I shifted a few feet over to see what was hiding behind the bus, and sure enough there he was: Old Man Moon.

He has inspired me over the years: he dares to smile, knowing that smile was created by violent rocks as big as a house. Can we react the same after such harsh treatment? He sits out there isolated yet on display before half the world.

Down at the choke point that is the Golden Glades interchange, another express bus ahead of me pulled back out of courtesy and let us pass so we could make our way to the I-95 express lanes. This common practice involves staying in the right lane which feeds the 826, then switching lanes before the dotted lane marker goes solid, allowing us to bypass an incredible amount of waiting traffic. Since traffic is so congested at this point it is no quick operation to make room for a bus and vehicles behind are necessarily delayed trying to continue to the 826. As we completed our maneuver, a motorcyclist apparently upset with the delay squeezed himself through the tightest of margins between the two buses so he could get an obscene gesture in before he sped off. Although he was nimble on his two wheels, we were going in slow motion so we could adjust accordingly, but had we been less aware of his presence things could have gone another direction. He had something to say, though, and sometimes you've gotta express yourself.

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