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Troy, a beautiful city as long as you're uphill of it.
You walk into Troy and you'll either end up mugged in a back alley or mugged by a crazy black woman named Shirley (or rather her security guards) at a certain college. I'm still not sure which is preferable. The worst part of Troy isn't the poverty, or the lack of activity, or even the hills. No, the worst part of Troy is public transportation.
At RPI there are 2 ways to get around in the winter: walking and the shuttles. The shuttles are notorious in terms of their schedule, to the point where you'll have a 10 minute wait followed by 5 minutes standing in a mini-sized bus (with handrails if you're lucky). In order to minimize the wait, the glorious student union had the brilliant idea of setting up a shuttle tracking service! Which you can check easily with your laptop, before spending 3 minutes turning off your computer because you need it for class and then a 10 minute wait because the shuttle you were planning on was already full. But despite the Shuttle's inability to be on time, it's not too bad for one simpe reason, the drivers are nice.
The other forms of public transportation in Troy are cabs and CDTA buses. The cabs are pretty much the stereotype of cabs. My biggest complaint about them is the dispatchers are assholes, I don't mind them too much though since I've only had to use them twice. CDTA is the worst bussing company I know of. They serve all around Albany and sometimes have high-tech busses, which usually have cut up seats and leaking A.C. units. The only thing I can say in support of them is they're usually pretty close to schedule. Which is useful if you can figure out when they're where... Especially since most of their timetables end hours before the bus stops doing its run. They have this useful Trip Planner tool on their website, which I think they call a Trip Planner because the time it should take you to do the entire trip you spend waiting between busses.
I wouldn't mind CDTA too much if the drivers were nice or smart or cared or even had a brain period. That'd be too much to ask... All this general knowledge brings me to my real story. If you're reading this on the frontpage, click the Read More link.
So today was my long day of the week, I had class from noon till 8. But since my last class is easy and is half lab, I get out early. Today I got out at around 7. I walk through the slush to the Shuttle, just wanting to get back to my dorm so I can get dinner and maybe do whatever I need to do for the next day. I hit the shuttle stop and begin to wait. I had a very interesting wait, I watched people driving with headlights that are way too bright, doing weird k-turns, and even the Crossgates mall bus going by. After 15 minutes or so, 3 other people come over and wait for the shuttle as well. The most notable is this girl talking on her cell-phone to her sibling (I'm pretty sure sister) who also goes to RPI. I'll refer to them as C and D respectively. Since there was nothing else to do, I listened in some. The most amusing parts being when C essentially asked D whether she was interested in men or women following that up with "well, I didn't know if you switched." I also got some back-story. D was waiting for C up by C's car, but D did not have C's car key, D is most likely a Fresmen and they have a younger sibling who was currently applying to RIT. Their mom apparently was about to send them a care package and asked what they wanted.
Finally, around 7:45 a shuttle comes, followed shortly by another Shuttle as is customary. For those of you who are paying attention, yes I actually waited over half an hour for a shuttle. My dorm is a 10 minute walk away from campus. It's not a matter of being lazy, it's a matter of being stubborn. So the five of us who were waiting (one more person came near the end of the wait who smoked a cigarette and had a vague resemblance to Jim from The Office-I'll call him Jim if I have to refer to him again), went into the shuttle. C hung up with D, and sat on the right side of the shuttle. I sat between two seats as is customary on non-crowded shuttles when there are exactly two side-by-side empty seats. The night-time route for shuttles goes from the residential hill, down to main campus, then to the administrative side of campus, to the union and back up to the residential hill. The daytime route excludes the visit to the administrative side. So when we turn right at the union intersection, it becomes clear we're going on the longer night-time route. At this point I start studying C's face. She has one of the most dynamic faces I've seen. Her emotions are clear as day. As we turn right she internally rolls her eyes, she gets a bemused look for a while, then once she settles down her face reflects she's thinking about something. As we approach the union we see 2 CDTA buses, one little one which resembles a Shuttle and one big one. The big one seems pretty comfortable where it is, so the shuttle attempts to go around it. However the genius hired by CDTA had the brilliant idea of parking right in front of the entrance to the union, which is equal in terms of traffic to a side road. But it's not like he had a ton of room behind him or he could have stopped somewhere less likely to cause an accident. And incase you were wondering, yes that was sarcastic.
So here's where the fun start. I think the driver should have turned on some hardcore rock at this point. He considers trying to squeeze past the bus, but there's not enough room to make a wide right and get in there. So he goes forward and considers going in the out, but decides against it and instead turns left, going up the road on the other side and does a u-turn, ends up 270 degrees away from where he originally was. And he goes for it, goes across the road, between the bus and the lamp poast. The left tire hits the curb, goes up lurching the right side even closer to the CDTA bus. At this point I hear C go "oh great" and look to see another shuttle had decided on Option B and went the wrong way through the loop. At this point things calm down, as the drivers get on the radio. The other driver says he thought our driver was giving up and skipping that stop. The driver of our shuttle explains he didn't want to go the wrong way through it. Well the other driver wisely says, "when you're dealing with cowboys you gotta be a cowboy" with the best Texan accent I've heard. At this point we think it's all over. I take a few measurements of C and see she's in not too bad a mood. It's clear (especially with how much her head was bouncing) she was tired, but she was in a good mood, she seemed to find the humor in the situation. Oh, and of course at the Union, both shuttles got filled because of the huge crowd that was there waiting. Also, as we were leaving the union, I see the CDTA bus was moving.
Then we start to go up-hill. The guy sitting to the left of me gets a call and explains to a less technically competent individual how to turn on the heat in his car. He directs her to the left side of the steering wheel and to turn a knob 90 degrees clockwise. He then tells her to turn off the turn-signal and instead directs her to the heat vent and then over. Shortly thereafter we get to the field house and we come to a stop, a ways back behind the bus-shelter where the shuttles drop off. At this point a murmur comes through the air and a second boss battle begins. The other shuttle is ahead of us, between us and CDTA. The other shuttle gives up and drops its load well behind the shelter. He then comes up on the radio and says "this guy is sitting there reading a newspaper" Our shuttle pulls up next to the bus and opens the door. The CDTA Driver opens his window. The Shuttle driver says "This isn't a great place to park," those of us whose stop this is begin to get off. The CDTA Driver snaps back with "I have a lady on here who needs to go to Crossgates and I'm not letting her off here!" The Shuttle driver suggests he go park in the parking lot on the other side of the guard rail. The CDTA Driver uses all his mana and uses "DID YOU HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID?" and that is where I left earshot and shortly broke out in laughter.
You might say this is an isolated incident but no, this is the typical CDTA Driver. He can have one thought at a time, which was "I can't let her wait in the cold for this other bus!" meanwhile, he parks his bus in front of an entrance and then he goes and moves in front of a bus shelter blocking the busses that use the shelter. It'd be understandable if he at least didn't start yelling instantly when the driver suggested he move rather than blocking it, but no, this is CDTA we're talking about. Every single CDTA bus I've been on was driven by a person who hated the job, hated everyone who used the bus, detested anything suggested to them, and have the intellectual capability of a sloth.
So, how was your day?
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