Today became a bit more adventuresome than I expected it to be, thanks to a slight change of schedule, and a few transportation-related goofs on my part.
Today was my first day of training at my new position. Thanks to some various scheduling conflicts that had to be worked out, I ended up being scheduled to work today, next Tuesday, and next Thursday at the new spot from 1pm-5pm, then bus out to my current store to close it down at 9pm, while working my normal 1pm-9pm shift at the current store on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The next two weeks after that I’ll be solely at my current store, covering for our other primary production operator while he’s on vacation. The week after that is my vacation in Anchorage, and then, once I’m back from vacation, I’ll actually start my new 8am-5pm schedule at the new spot.
Since the new spot is only a few blocks away from my apartment, I didn’t bother to grab my bus pass when I walked out the door to head off in the morning. Once my day finished at 5pm, though, I realized that that had been rather stupid of me — as I was supposed to be at my current store at 6pm, it would have been best if I could have just gone straight to the bus stop. Instead, I had to head back up the hill to the apartment, grab my bus pass, then head back down to catch the bus out to Georgetown.
By the time I’d made it back down to the bus stop, I’d missed my usual route, the 174. Not a terribly big deal, as the 135 came along shortly thereafter, and it’s my “backup bus” if I miss the 174 for any reason. Both of them head right down 4th Avenue out of downtown, and drop me off just a few blocks away from the store.
So, I hop on the 135, and settle in for the ride. Quickly, though, I realize that there’s one aspect of this plan that I hadn’t thought of before today: that of having to get from downtown Seattle to the Georgetown neighborhood right at the peak of rush hour. No quick trip this one, the few blocks through the downtown core was positively glacial. Still, I wasn’t terribly worried — it just meant that I’d be getting to work a bit closer to the 6pm mark than I had initially figured I would.
All seemed fine and dandy until rather than continuing on its normal route down 4th Avenue, the bus suddenly took a turn to the right and got onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct that runs beside the waterfront. Um…what’s going on here? I wasn’t too sure just where things were going to go from here, but I didn’t get too worried yet. I figured that it was possible that the bus took a jaunt along the Viaduct to avoid the worst of the downtown rush hour traffic, and hoped that it would hop back onto its normal route when it reached the end of the Viaduct.
No such luck, though, as soon we were merrily motoring our way across the West Seattle Bridge, with all hope of getting to Georgetown anywhere even remotely close to when I was supposed to be there rapidly receding into the distance.
Well, crud. As we approached the end of the bridge, I worked my way to the front of the bus, and asked the driver what the fastest way back across the bridge would be. He told me to get off at the next stop and take the next 135 back across the bridge, and I hopped off the bus to take stock of my situation.
Things weren’t looking too good: it was just slightly after 6pm, and rather than walking in the door of the store, I was standing at a bus stop in the shadow of the West Seattle Bridge off-ramps, and the next 135 back across the bridge wasn’t due to show up for another twenty minutes. Even worse, though, was that even once I did get on another bus to head back, it would most likely just take me back downtown, at which point I’d just have to wait for yet another bus — this time, one heading to where I actually wanted to go — and by then, I didn’t think that I’d be making it to work until 7:30pm at the earliest. Not promising at all.
Thankfully, though, here my luck finally started to turn around. There was a little diner just across the street, so since I had some time before the next bus arrived, I headed over to see if they had a public phone available. They did, and I called in to work to let them know that while I was trying to get there, I wasn’t terribly sure when I’d actually be able to get there. When I called, I was expecting my manager to be the only one left at the store, so he’d have to wait for me to show up, rather than leave the store unattended — as it turned out, though, a large job had kept one of the other employees there later than usual. My boss turned the store over to them, hopped in his car to come pick me up, and twenty minutes later I was finally at work — and only half an hour late.
The worst part about the whole thing? I just figured out what went wrong with taking my “backup bus”. It’s the 136 or the 137 that I’m supposed to take if I miss the 174, not the 135. Argh.
Chalk one up for stupidity. Oh, well.
Next Tuesday, though, my bus pass comes with me when I leave in the morning, and I stick to the routines that I know will get me where I need to go, when I need to be there. I’ve had enough adventuring for now!
iTunes: “Who Am I? (Animatrix Edit)” by Peace Orchestra from the album Animatrix: The Album (2003, 5:58).