Bus Humor

Tahna and Shellee on the bus

Jen and I on the crazy bus ride

I had to do a post on the bus system here because we laugh every time we ride it. Every bus driver we've had drives like a maniac and the bus rattles and clanks around trying to bear the many pot holes and flaws in the road at such a rapid speed. We get such a kick out of our rides because the bus driver punches the gas the second the door closes and if you haven't been seated yet, well then you better hurry and park it or else it's likely that you'll find yourself on the floor. The speed limit on most of the roads is between 25-35 mph and we're going about 50 or 60. Once they see someone waiting at a stop, they SLAM their breaks on and within about 3 seconds we've come to a stop. With each stop we repeat the same sequence--punch it, then slam on the breaks. The buses here work differently than I've ever seen before. There are designated stops everywhere, but they don't stop somewhere unless they see people waiting at the stop or someone requests a stop. There are these wire rope things that are strung along the inside of the entire bus which you can see in the photos above. Once you want to stop, you pull the rope and it will notify the driver that you want to stop at the next bus stop. It's really nice because then you don't have to waste time stopping at every bus stop; however, it's hard because we don't know our way around that well so we're always trying to figure out when to pull the rope.

Last night we had to document because it was hilarious! First, we were worried because we decided to go check out the night life in Hale'iwa (which we found out there was none) and so we were out later than we have been since we got here. We were waiting for the bus in the dark and started worrying that the last bus had already come (because even on a bus ride it takes about 20 minutes to get back to Turtle Bay). To our great relief, the bus came about 5 minutes later and we got on. Our first sign that the bus driver was iffy was that he didn't even check our bus passes. We started walking down the isle to sit down and WHAM!--the driver punched the gas and we found ourselves scrambling to catch a seat. We finally sat down and all just started busting up laughing because we had to look ridiculous I'm sure! The driver kicked up the speed and we were hauling down that road. He spotted someone waiting at a bus stop and WHAM!--we had stopped. He then punched the gas again and we went speedily on our way. The bus came upon a red Mustang and the bus driver literally got about 4 feet from the rear of that car. He drove like that for a few minutes and we could tell that he was agitated by the driver of the Mustang. Finally, he drove right up on his rear and started flashing his brights and honking his horn at the guy (mind you, the guy was probably going like 40 mph so he wasn't in the wrong). A few minutes later, the bus driver had had it and turned his brights on and followed that car like nobody's business. We were terrified, but giggling our heads off the whole time.This happened until maybe a half of a mile before Turtle Bay and the red Mustang finally turned off onto another road. Oh what a night on the bus that was!