Grumbling is Never Done

If RantWoman ever stops grumbling, her friends should probably check her pulse. The occasion of today's grumbling: Saturday RantWoman wanted to go downtown, go to the Pike Place Market to buy flowers, and arrive at a friend's new apartment by a specific time. This simple desire was fraught with more than enough RantWoman adventures to last all weekend.


The go downtown part was easy, except for encounters wit two grumbles RantWoman probably should convey to appropriate authorities instead of just collect in her blog.



One grumble has to do with new low-floor buses. RantWoman in fact rode the 7 downtown and scored one of the old articulated buses with enough poles that RantWoman could find her way all the way back to more empty seats in the back. One of RantWoman's visual perplexities is that it is often easier for RantWoman to find the poles than it is to tell whether a seat is empty or inhabited by someone in dark clothing who would not appreciate RantWoman sitting. Ambassador Thwack can be a little indolent and sometimes RantWoman lets him sleep in for trips she is really familiar with. RantWoman knows perfectly well this practice has risks including confusion for many and collisions for RantWoman.; sometimes these risks are RantWoman's idea of living on the edge for the day. RantWoman has no idea whether or not Ambassador Thwack was sleeping in on Saturday.



For routes RantWoman rides all the time, RantWoman usually does not care about whether the driver calls the stops because there are usually enough ways for RantWoman to figure out what she needs to get off at the right time. This does NOT mean all you drivers are off the hook about calling the stops for all the other people who might need them, but that is not the point of Rantwoman's grumble! RantWoman means to grumble instead about the new models of low-floor articulated buses.



RantWoman has been on more than one model that has no bus poles for something like 12 feet in the middle of the bus around the articulated middle. RantWoman is tall and long-armed or at least the simian swing-through the trees part of our species' past has not completely disappeared. RantWoman has decent but not great bus legs. But RantWoman does not even want to try making the 12-foot leap on a moving bus, not even for a better chance at an empty seat and more legroom. RantWoman would not try this even if she could see and it is one of those subtle design features that people might not even think of unless they regularly ride buses and try to find seats while the bus is rounding some turn.



Once RantWoman found her seat, she was seized with a brilliant idea. The friend she meant to visit lives on a bus route RantWoman likes a lot but does not ride very often. The bus route has a half-hour headway so RantWoman would need to pay more attention to timing than she does on some of her transit routings. Oh, think much of RantWoman's public, use your mobile device. Hah! RantWoman has a really prosaic cellphone and the best option for her purposes is BUSTIME. RantWoman ADORES BUSTIME


Rantwoman poked out the number and the first thing she hit was a whole bunch of goop about how to get Metro info on the web. Earth to Metro: I am CALLING BUSTIME ona very plain cellphone without internet access. RantWoman has whole tirades about device accessibility, plan pricing, and other topics abstruse enough to bore a government reports salesman. The point is that RantWoman is CALLING BUSTIME and really, really does not want to have to sit through exhortations to get the information she wants some way that is not available to her. RantWoman wants to go straight to the BUSTIME Menus.


RantWoman's second peeve is stepping all the way through the BUSTIME menues and then getting a stop number before she gets the timetable info she called about. RantWoman wonders whether anyone actually uses the 4-digit BUSTIME stop number. RantWoman tends to use BUSTIME very occasionally for stops she kind of knows but uses rarely. What the hell is she going to do with a 4-digit stop number? RantWoman wonders whether there are people who access BUSTIME who do in fact use the stop number or whether a larger percentage of people are like RantWoman. But one problem about testing this is people might not call BUSTIME more than once about the same stop anyway. They might just remember the time for subsequent days.

But here, RantWoman at least made it to Pike Place Market. The go to the market was about like it usually is on Saturdays which is to say herds and herds of massive masses filtering in and out of walkways and byways and roadways and sidewalks and alleys and booths and stalls and street musicians and strollers and dogs and sometimes kids in strollers and sometimes kids out of strollers and sometimes people buying vegetables and sometimes people buying baked goods and generally an all around orgy of human activity.

RantWoman did not wander far and did not linger. Ambassador Thwack can only part crowds within limits and sometimes Ambassador Thwack also just causes outbreaks of confusion: how is it you arrived at my stall unaided and can ask questions like what is that (name that color) thing but cannot read my price list?



Here RantWoman must admit to one indignity Ambbassador Thwack sometimes get subjected to. When RantWoman was much younger she had a brief flirtation with baton twirling. The idea of a young RantWoman getting two arms and two legs moving as desired in time to music turned out mostly to be pretty preposterous, but RantWoman did learn really well how to twirl the baton.


From time to time in moments of idleness, for instance at bus stops, RantWoman is overcome with nostalgia for her youth and sets to twirling Ambassador Thwack. RantWoman suspects that Ambassador Thwack probably thinks such is way beneath his station. RantWoman knows many diplomats who have endured much worse indignities, but RantWoman, when faced with some vendor perplexity in the presence of Ambassador Thwack, one of these days is going to say, well Ambassador Thwack is not there just in case RantWoman wants to play drum major! In the meantime RantWoman is working on a more genteel elevator speech about, no, I really cannot read this.

RantWoman's pluck in the face of all these vexations was ultimately well-rewarded. She arrived at her friend's new building and concurred with RantMom's opinion from a promotional visit awhile ago: the surrounding topography would give mountain goats vertigo. Nevertheless, RantWoman's friend was delighted with lilies from the market and we passed a lovely afternoon dining and talking and playing Scrabble, patient Scrabble with extra time for people to peer close out of fog before playing but utterly delightful.