Out of my natural habitat

I had a "moment" this past weekend, when I realized how much the X Deuce had changed me as a person. Now, when I first started riding, especially during peak crazo hours (aprox. 11:00am to 3:00pm), I quietly freaked out at just about anything. Even having traveled in various sketch modes of transportation in far more foreign and dangerous situations, being in an environment right in my neighborhood and yet completely removed from my "normal" took a lot of adjusting. But apparently, I've gotten over it. I was taking the Circulator bus from the National Mall (where all those big monuments and museums are) to Union Station with two friends, both of whom also ride the X2. Now, the Circulator is a different beast, as it were, than other WMATA buses. It primarily caters to tourists, and has fixed loop routes through major areas of the city. After taking the scenic, and most likely unintended route around most of the area around the Capitol, we finally stopped for passengers to get off. Being in the back half of the bus, my friends and I went to exit the back door, which was closed. So, in her best X2 voice, my friend hollas (no other verb for it), "Back doah!" to which I added "Comin out bus driva!" It wasn't til we stepped off the bus and saw the odd looks that we were getting from the various tourists and yuppies that we realized that our normal bus etiquette was not how all buses operate. For instance, the X2: barrel down the street as fast as possible, screech to a halt and scramble to get on/off the bus. Be prepared to yell at the bus driver to actually get your stop, as well as holla/push the back door open manually. Compare that to the Circulator, with 1/3 the people, 4/3 the air conditioning, and 1/2 the speed, all within the comfortable bounds of tourist DC (one of our fellow riders joked about not wanting the driver to get lost and end up in Northeast DC. Our response: That'd be great!) Just a reality check for both my neighborhood, and the rest of the city.

It began on the X2...but it ended on the roof.

Oh what a night. So, coming home from another type-A DC activity, I was catching up on extremely important lawyer joke emails and facebook posts on my iPhone, aka My Baby/additional appendage, whichever metaphor resonates with you the most. When out of nowhere, this young guy grabs it. He tries to rip it out of my hand and take off, jumping off the bus just as the doors are closing (increasingly typical MO, see Unsuck DC Metro's excellent coverage here). I held on to it and started swearing at him (a troubling first reaction for a double pastor's kid, but hey, I was in the moment), so he just booked it.

But no, there's more. The night got even better. A knock on our door around 11:00 turns out to be a couple of our neighbors with some news and a request: one of their kittens was stuck on our roof, and could they get up there to bring him down? This led to me and a newly introduced neighbor (though not the cat owner, she was sensibly observing from below) spending the better part of an hour on our porch roof trying to coax down a kitten from our house roof. This involved, but was not limited to: 3 laundry baskets, 2 ladders, a cat toy, a felt and wire flower, climbing in and out of my window multiple times, almost dying when one of said ladders collapsed underneath me, and getting stared/yelled at by all our non-white neighbors down below, one of whom was being a jackass til he found out the cat we were trying to rescue wasn't ours nor our white neighbor's, but our black neighbor's. All the while my roommates and I are in our pajamas. Because we're classy like that.

But no, there's more. The night got even better (this time not in an ironic way). Still wired after getting all the people and cat-catching equipment through my window and off my porch roof, I get on gchat to recount this to one of my best friends Hilary:
me: then I just spent an hour getting a kitten off my roof

Hilary: wow

me: me, my two white roommates, and our one white neighbor up in the house with a bunch of black neighbors staring at us from the street

Hilary: laughing at your kitten retrieval attempts?

me: laughing/making fun of us. one was kinda being a jerk til he found out the cat belonged to one of our black neighbors

Hilary: look at you: 4 white chicks and a cat, bridging the racial divide. Well done! sounds like something that would happen to Sam and Josh somehow. Now I'm imagining the scene: [What follows is Hilary's spontaneously hilarious re-imagining of this scene, only in the show "The West Wing". It loses something if you haven't seen the show, but props to Hil's latent screenwriting abilities.]

Josh: Could you just reach...seriously, Sam, just reach across the roof and
grab its...
Donna: Josh? What are you doing up there?
Josh: Drafting the State of the Union, Donna, what does it look like we're
doing?
Donna: Risking a broken neck?

Sam: Donna, we need a laundry basket.
Josh: Yeah. We'll just scoop the little thing up and put it through a spin
cycle. That'll show it.

Donna: Josh! Don't go near the cat. You're not a cat person! [pause] Okay, I
have an idea. I have a friend who knows all about this. His name's Joe, and

he could really use the work...
Josh: Donna! No, just get the...

Charlie (approaching the house on foot): Uh, guys? The cat jumped down onto

the porch and ran down the street about ten minutes ago.
Josh: OK. OK...no one tell the President
about this.

(The next day, in the hallway.)

CJ: So, I heard something about a performance of "Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof" last night. Anything you'd like to share with the class, Joshua?

(Later that day, in Leo's office, before a meeting.)
Leo: You spent half an hour chasing a cat around a roof? This is what passes
for the best and the brightest around here?
Josh: Leo, this wasn't our fault!
Leo: Right.
Josh: That cat was crazy!
Sam: It was clearly a Republican cat.
Josh: Yes. Yes, that it was.
Margaret (poking her head in): My cat runs out of the room and scratches at
the curtains when she sees the Speaker of the House on TV.
Leo: We need to get that cat elected!
Josh: It'd be smarter than most of the incumbents.

Overheard: X2 Edition

Personal space on the X2 is essentially nonexistent, so any given ride is really a full-sensory experience. The one with the most potential for annoyance and/or entertainment is the cell phone conversations that take place right next to your ear. For the low price of $1.35, you get a front row seat to the latest drama in someones life, from their perspective, in a one-sided conversation format (unless the speaker has unfortunately discovered the volume button on their phone, in which case it becomes a conversation between the speaker and Charlie Brown's teacher). For instance, I got to hear the ongoing drama of this 20 year old girl's life, who's boyfriends baby momma is coming between her and her boyfriend's family, and how she's got a mouth and is fucked. up, but she's the mother of their grandchild, and what the fuck is up with that shit? Why should my boyfriend's momma like her more? And invite her to shit wit the family? She just a ho, anyways. Et cetera, et cetera. Personally, I was most impressed at the number of different swear words she managed to fit into one incomplete sentence in casual conversation. Usually on the bus it's just muthafucka this, muthafucka that, but this was especially creative. Really, I feel I should just throw out my GRE vocab cards and start writing these down. Much more educational, right?
More Overheards to come, probably in an upcoming "All I ever needed to know about the American criminal justice system I learned on the X Crazy"

...and then he hit the bus driver.

So backing up a bit. From time to time, there are various scuffles, throwdowns, "incidents", and whatnot on the X Crazy, with a myriad of causes. Here's one of them, essentially a one-off. After the swollen chokepoint that is the intersection of 7th and H St, the bus usually settles in for the long haul. Not this time. There was a man pacing the aisle, distracting me from my usual post-gym zone-out. He was getting more and more agitated, starting to get into it with a couple passengers. Eventually he heads up to the front and hits the driver in the face, for a reason probably only known to the man. Well, the driver promptly bounces his ass off the bus, stops for a couple minutes, and then continues on. Interlude: what is it about the X Duece that brings this out in people? Granted, the population of the bus is wildly varied, descriptions of which will come in a later post. But really, why hit the guy who's driving the freaking bus? [Sam: This country is populated with unbalanced people, many of whom find their way to Washington, as if the continent funnels them into this one spot.] End of story, right? 12 minutes and 8 blocks later, the driver decides to pull over and THEN call metro security. Cuz that's the crack law enforcement you want on the case, really. The passengers started yelling at him to "keep the damn bus moving". He wisely took their advice, and continued down the street. (Amy: This means major ba points. Katy: I'm just the bystander, soaking it all in.)