Thursday Morning Commute

OK so wow, when you make a conscious decision to open your eyes to the world around you, you begin to see so many interesting things! Simple things, complex things, things that just make you stop for a moment, take a deep breath and smile..

Here's some of those things from my morning commute =)

Well first here's ME! =)


<~~On my way to the bus stop. It's about a half block from my apartment to the intersection, then I hang a left and walk another block to the bust stop. This morning was really nice - not too cold, just a little nippy - it gave the air a fresh crisp feeling. Usually I just walk the walk and not really pay attention to the surrounding scenery. This morning I looked..

~~>Here's me at the bus stop - the blue thing to my right behind me is a bench - I have a slightly better picture you'll see a little further down. There's a huge tree right on the corner too - it's beautiful.

I forgot what these are called but they remind me of Christmas.. there's a tree in a yard I pass on my walk to the bus stop in the morning - the ENTIRE tree looks like this - bright greens & rich reds. HOLLY that's what it's called - how funny! I don't know about you but for me it always works that way - I'll wrack my brain for hours trying to remember a word for something or someone's name then the very second I give up & say oh well, it pops into my head!

Here's fellow passengers at my morning stop -

The guy in the red jacket has been there every morning. I think he works at Wal-Mart - at least that's where he gets off the bus every day. The lady - it's the first time I've seen her. She wouldn't sit on the bench lol I imagine because she was wearing white pants. She was also freezing - she didn't have on a coat!

The bench I was nervous to sit on my first day - it's got what looks like green spray paint all over it - some kids idea of graphic art I'm sure. But it's actually pretty clean. I was for sure it would at least have some bird poo on it but nope! I wonder if people from the transit authority do regular checks of the stops to make sure they are in decent condition..

This is the house that sits on the corner where the bus station is. It's actually an lawyer's office now - I'm sure it was converted. Mobile has absolutely some of the most beautiful homes and architecture I've ever seen. One of these days I'll get downtown with a regular camera and take some pictures. It reminds me a lot of downtown Boston

Here is what's left of a pair of sunglasses on the ground in front of the bench. I noticed them Monday. I wish there was a garbage nearby - it's sad that people feel it's ok to leave their trash on the ground just anywhere.

This past Saturday - my birthday - I walked a few blocks down the street to the corner store to buy myself some ice cream - since my accident stranded me at home for the weekend and I missed out on birthday cake. It amazed me the amount of junk people had thrown on sidewalk and surrounding lawns. Dozens of pop bottles, bags of chips, candy wrappers, empty fast food bags, you name it and it could probably be found on the side of the road in the few blocks north of my house. It's odd really - my street - well the block of the street I live on is in a nicer area of down town. Yet once you go through the light at the corner of my block you enter into an completely different world. The houses and apartments are run down, the roads are littered. It's not entirely unlikely that you might be able to find a um "lady of the night" on the corner a few blocks up.

The turquoise dot on the aeriel map is my apt - the yellow one is the store I bought my birthday ice cream from lol - the pink dot to the right is the bus stop I walk to in the morning. It looks a lot further than it actually is lol.

OK - so I suppose I'd better actually do a little more work today so I must be going, but again I hope you enjoyed coming on my journey with me today! I hope today and each day after brings you a journey of your own!

Love and Blessings

Mollie Jo

Riding the Wave....

I apologize ahead of time for the bad spacing in between the pictures and paragraphs - for some reason blogger doesn't allow you to put stuff where you want it!!

I've always loved photography. Viewing the world through a lens, seeing life in pictures. When I was younger I'd carry my little 35mm camera with me and just snap random pictures of random people and places. I have a great picture of an elderly black man weed eating the sidewalk, a neat picture of a group of workers striking outside the building where they work with signs.. a cow in a field near the construction office where my mom used to work..

It's a hobby/passion that I've never really pursued seriously but also never really stopped enjoying. I said all that to say this.. I've realized during my journey on the public transit system that there are some phenomenal pictures to be taken. And my camera phone just isn't cutting it!

I did take some pictures today though, on my ride home from work and I'm going to share them with you.. and the stories behind them...

Here is the stop where I caught the bus for my trip home from work. The bus makes it to this stop at about 5:25pm. I get off work at 5:00pm. There is no bench at this stop, it's on a relatively busy road - 2 lanes each way. And it was, again, COLD. Not as bad as yesterday, but still cooler than comfortable for a half hour wait outside! The way the cars look in the picture.. that's pretty much how they looked to me. When it starts getting dark out and you're facing traffic, the lights on the cars give everything a blurry appearance. Just blur and lights and more blur.

Here's where I stood for most of the wait. I stood on the grass for a while but it was really thick and really soft. My shoes kept sinking. So I stood on a concrete slab over a drain on the side of the street. It's really hmm I guess a combination of peculiar and thought provoking, waiting on the side of the road for a bus. People in the cars driving by seem to really only have 3 ways of reacting. They either stare at you as they zoom by. Probably wondering why in the world is that girl standing on the side of the street? Why doesn't she have a car? Doesn't she know anyone who could give her a ride? Or they glance at you and quickly turn their head, pretending they didn't see you standing there on the corner, all bundled up with your head tucked into the neck of your jacket shivering. A young girl in a van that stopped at the red light on the corner where I waited took this approach. She looked at me, I smiled, then she looked away and made an obvious effort not to turn her head back toward the window. I took a picture of her but it didn't come out very well. Then there is the last reaction. They just zoom by and never even notice that you're there. I can't count the number of people I saw eating, drinking, chatting on the phone, reading!.. completely oblivious to the world around them.

Here is the mother and her two little girls I mentioned in my last blog. I think they missed the earlier bus they usually catch right after school and had to wait for the next one. This was at 5:45pm. Every day she boards with her little angels and they entertain themselves for the 20-30 minute ride. This evening they started out singing their ABC's.. that lasted for about 10 minutes. Then the little one on the left entertained herself for about 10 minutes folding her pink toboggan in half over and over again, then unfolding and folding all over. The older one had a fantastically entertaining and in depth imaginary phone conversation with Barbie. Her hand was the phone and she chatted away - playing both sides of the conversation - for a good 15 minutes. When her little sister realized that she wasn't being paid attention to she began to mimic her and had her own little phone conversation. She had butterflies on the bottom of her shoes. You can tell she adores her big sister and wants to do everything just like her. Their mom.. some of the older ladies on the bus this morning were gossiping about her after she got off the bus. The older of the two girls took off to cross the street as soon as they disembarked and her mom grabbed her arm just in time to stop her running right in front of a car. The ladies on the bus commented "She need to stop chatting up the driver and watch those babies! - that one.. she run right off every time. She ask that other driver will he wait on her in the afternoon - ask him to wait on her." They sounded very ehh well judgmental and unimpressed with the pretty young lady and her requests for it seemed to them special treatment. I did notice the morning bus driver makes a point to chat with her and the girls for a few minutes every morning when they get on.

Here's some of what the inside of the bus looks like -

It seems that there are 2 or 3 different bus models, and they all have different seating arrangements. My evening bus has two seats right when you get on the bus to the left that are raised up off the floor about a foot and a half. Then there are a row of 4 seats on each side of the bus. This picture shows the upper seats in the back of the bus. They're two steps up off the main level. I've sat in the upper seat in the front and the seats on the rights side of the bus for all of my trips so far. I don't think I'll go to the back. I like to see where I'm going to make sure I don't miss my stop!


Here are some of my fellow journeymen and women -

The older gentleman in the middle apparently has a crush on the lady in the blue sitting in front of him. The guy in the hard hat - he was sitting two seats from me - was sitting where the guy in the brown jacket was sitting, but when he saw the older gentleman at the upcoming stop he moved - and commented laughingly "I'd better give ol boy his seat - you know how he likes to sit next his buddy!"

Mr. Hard Hat putting his bicycle on the front of the bus.. He was on the first route I took this morning too. Before my public transit adventure is over I may ask him his name and see if he'll share some of this story - but for now I'm content to just watch and imagine - plus I'm chicken! lol I can admit it =)

This guy got on close to the end of my route - for some reason I guess he felt like he'd better fix his do.. which I found funny because other than a ring of longer white hair around the bottom of his head he was completely bald?? See the lady sitting in the upper seat behind him? She nodded off as soon as she got on the bus.. and stayed asleep through the entire route! That is absolutely amazing to me because these drivers drive like bats outta hell. More than once I was certain I would be catapulted out of my seat onto the floor! See she's still sleeping~>

These two got on at the mall with me.. that's my hand in the first picture holding on for dear life.. sure I'd be thrown from my seat at the next curve in the road! They only lasted a few minutes into the ride before nodding off. The briefcase & the arm on the far right of the picture belong to


This guy -

He got on, set his briefcase and bag down then went back to the front of the bus to pay his fare - (OH I realize I haven't mentioned the fare!! It's $1.25 per ride - and a 10¢ connection fee - so I pay $1.35 for my ride to work and $1.35 for my ride home each day. Not bad huh!) Then he sat down and chatted with the bus driver about video games - I don't remember which one he was talking about but I do remember hearing him say it cost $399.00!! Then he lamented about how he can't ever figure out his woman - she gets mad when he plays the video game - complaining that he doesn't pay attention to her, but then when he does pay attention she isn't happy.. here's him shaking his head about the whole subject ~~>

Here's the bus stop at the mall - this is the connecting stop for all the buses... and the nifty little digital sign that tells you when what bus will arrive next - the last picture is my connecting bus to get home. I guess he put the sign on NOT IN SERVICE during the break between his routes so no one would get on the bus while he wasn't on it and not pay - He forgot he'd changed the sign too - someone asked him which bus his was and he said - "Doesn't it say Dauphin on the front?!" - "No sir, it doesn't"







So that was my journey today - well the half that took me back home anyway - I hope you enjoyed the ride and again I really do recommend that everyone try out their local public transit system at least one time - if for no other reason than to say you did it! lol But I'm pretty sure you'll get much more out of the ride!!!


Namasté


Mollie


- postscript-
I always wondered what Namasté meant so I did some looking - taken literally it means "I bow to you" - Deepak Chopra gives it a less literal and I think more enjoyable and acceptable meaning - "I honor the Spirit in you which is also in me." Just some fun facts!

Public Transit... and being thankful

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 4:48pm I was in an automobile accident.

Someone two cars in front of me stopped dead in the middle of the road - apparently to let someone on a side street out. How nice of them you might be saying - that would be so if the place they decided to stop hadn't been in the middle of a very busy 4 lane rd with NO stop lights or stop signs anywhere near by. The truck in front of me tried to stop and hit the car who'd stopped in the middle of the street.

I was about 2 - 2 1/2 car lengths behind the truck and thought I had plenty of time and room to stop. That might have been the case, except as soon as I touched the peddle my brakes locked up and I slid into the truck that had hit the car in front of him. My airbag deployed and my seat belt, thankfully locked so quickly and so tightly that my back never left the seat. I have wonderful multicolored bruises from my collarbone all the way to my heel, but I am in one piece and I am alive -- and thankful! That little recap was to get to the subject at hand.

The Public Transit System - in Mobile, AL also known as "The Wave". I've never been in an auto accident before - in all my 16yrs of driving. I've had a little fender bender or two but never anything serious. It's because of this safe driving history that I never thought I'd need rental reimbursement and opted not to have that coverage on my insurance policy when I bought my new car. Silly me. So I, much like the average person I imagine, just didn't have the extra cash sitting in the bank to cover a rental car for two weeks while my car is being repaired. (Think upwards of $400 for a compact!!) I wracked my brain trying to think of an alternative way to work for two weeks. I live about 8 miles from my office, which doesn't seem that far... if you're a trained marathon runner! So I hopped online, did some searching and discovered The Wave. I've seen the buses periodically since I moved to Mobile in May, but never really thought much about them. Needless to say I started thinking lol.

I have to say I was nervous.. what if there isn't a route that goes by my house? What if there isn't one that goes anywhere near my work?!? Well as the case usually is, it's the times when you worry most about something that it ends up you needn't have worried at all. Turns out there is a stop one block from the intersection near my apartments. So it's about a block and a half walk. Then there is a connecting bus at the mall here that takes me to the corner of the nearest intersection where my office is. That stop requires a bit more walking but nothing impossible. It's about a half mile, maybe less or maybe more lol but it only took me 5 mins this morning to get from the corner where the bus dropped me off to my office. Those 5 minutes wouldn't have even been as bad as they were if it hadn't been so dang COLD!

So now I'll get to the thankful part. I get to the bus stop this morning, terrified I'd missed the bus, or worse yet it wouldn't' come at all. (I'd heard many a story about how unpredictable the local transit is here, evidently the people telling me how unreliable it is have never ridden it). Within a few minutes 2 ladies joined me, then a young man. The ladies were polite and conversational. So we board the bus and SWEET JESUS the driver drove like a maniac!!! I thought for sure we were going to flip over more than once lol.

I've never been a prejudice person, not of race, age, or anything really.. but I couldn't help, as I looked around the bus, but notice that I was in fact the only white person riding. Half way through the route a middle age white man got on - dressed for probably a construction job, but he only stayed on for a few stops - probably using the bus to get to a carpool. The ages of the riders were varied, from early twenties to possibly late 60's or 70's. A beautiful young black woman got on at the second stop with her two little girls - probably ages 3 and 5 or 6. They were riding the transit to school. I couldn't help but wonder how they ended up going to the school they were let off at when it was a good ways from where they boarded the bus. In Mobile you're required to attend schools in your district. But more than that it just really hit me.. here is a young mother - boarding the public transit at 7am to take her babies to school. For some reason I never imagined there being a need like that. I mean I know there is poverty and misfortune in America, but when you think of children going to school, somehow the public transit system never quite comes to mind in the picture you imagine.

I got to the mall, which is the connecting stop, at about 7:40am. The next bus I needed to take wouldn't come until 8am. It wasn't until I'd been sitting outside for about 10 minutes that I realized just why the driver offered to let me wait on the bus. IT WAS COLD! But there were several people, again of all ages, again of only one race sitting on the benches under the metal awning waiting for the next bus to take them to their destination. It was about this point that I stopped just going along for the ride (I read the first half of my trip) and really let the reality of what was going on around me start to sink in. I opened my eyes, and my mind to see.. An elderly white lady got on sometime during the second half of my trip. She was on her way to a dr appt. She had one of those 4 leg walkers with the seat in the middle. A couple of seats next to me was a young girl, in her early to mid-twenties. She had a McDonald's visor in hand and was trying to nap during the ride.

It was looking at that McDonald's visor that it hit me like a kick in the gut. I was in an accident, ya. My car will be in the shop for 2 weeks getting repaired, ok. I'm bruised from head to toe and feel like I've been thrown down a flight of stairs, sure. But I'm alive. I have a good ok decent lol paying job. I HAVE a new car even though it's a bit banged up right now. I have my health. I have for all intents and purposes a pretty damn good life. I felt guilty.. for feeling self pity about my situation, for being angry that my family didn't jump and come to Mobile to make sure I was ok after my wreck. (My cousin Karen did come stay the night with me the night of the wreck and for that I am so grateful) But I wanted my sister to come, my dad to call and see if I was ok.. All of which you're probably thinking are normal things.. ya well you haven't met my family, but that's an entirely different blog!

The night after my accident I was so upset, so hurt, so tired, just so overwhelmed about everything in life that I wanted to die. I laid in bed, weeping and begged God to just take me home. My Thanksgiving was ruined, my birthday was spent alone, in pain, with no where to go and no way to get there. I have to pay a $500 deductible that I don't have to get my car out once it's repaired, and God only knows how much the hospital bills will be from being taken to the ER in an ambulance! It was just too much, I was too tired and I couldn't take it anymore. I finally fell asleep and when I woke up the next morning it was a new day. None of the problems I was facing had gone away, it still hurt that my family hadn't been there for me the way I'd needed them to, but I'd been given a new day, a new breath, a new opportunity to get through.

I won't lie and say I all of a sudden got happy and thankful, or that I had an epiphany that everything was going to work out perfect. But this morning on the bus I got a glimpse of what my life COULD BE.. and it hit me that in spite of all the crap the world throws at me, and all the things that happen to bring me down, I could have it so much worse than I do. Not to say my life is any better than anyone else's, but I know that in 2 weeks, my car will be repaired and by some miracle, God will, as He always does create a way for me to have what I need. I know that even though I don't particularly enjoy sitting at at desk, I have a good steady reliable job that allows me to have an apartment with heat, a bed with soft sheets and comfy pillows, a refrigerator with food in it, an oven AND microwave to cook that food in, clean clothes to put on in the morning, hot water to take a shower... and so much more.

There's a blog I follow by a guy names Travis Ruse. It's a photo blog and it's pictures he takes of people on the express train on his daily commute to and from work in Brooklyn. When I first found the page and looked through the pictures I was just blown away by the simplicity, complexity, beauty and so many more adjectives, of the images he'd taken. People, just like you and me, people you've never met, and probably will never meet, yet in the images Travis takes you feel that you know them. You feel like you know their journey, their struggle, their accomplishments, their life, and yet this morning when I hopped on the bus, hoping it wasn't too awful of an experience I was surrounded by those same people, I WAS one of those people. And it was amazing. I think even after I get my car back I will take the bus every once in a while just for the experience. I truly recommend everyone use their public transit system. Even if only once. But when you get on the bus, get on and open your eyes... open your mind.. open your heart and you will see that you are so so incredibly blessed beyond your greatest imagination.

I laugh to myself now as I hear in my head the comments some people will make at the idea of using their local public transit system. Um no thank you, ew gross, that's only for poor people, ugh only smelly people ride the bus... they're all comments I've heard and some I'm ashamed to say I've probably thought at one time or another. I can promise you, just try it.. once.. and truly be aware of your surroundings when you ride... it will be an experience that can and if you let it change the way you think about your life, about other's lives, about life in general.

So I leave you now.. I have 4 hours and 6 minutes until I leave my office and walk the half mile to the bus stop to catch my ride home. I probably won't get there until about 7pm. I'll lose the time I usually use to feed my cats, change into my pj's, watch the episode of Ellen I recorded from earlier in the day, cook dinner and relax after work.. but I'll be grateful for every second of the ride.. knowing that there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING this world can throw my way that God can't and won't provide a solution for. It may not be the solution I'd like..but His solution just might be better FOR me.

God Bless..