A true transit tale.

You're probably aware of the transit strike in NYC. No busses, no subways. It literally crippled the city to the point that it looked like a summer weekend when everyone goes away. In a way it was kind of delightful - I usually hear honking off the West Side Highway and today was peaceful. If you don't live here, you don't realize that EVERYONE, I mean EVERYONE, relies on mass transit to get around. Workers from restaurants, employees, teachers, students... and to top it off, all cars were restricted from coming in unless they had 4 people from 5am-11am. No commercial vehicles could come in. I bet a lot of people didn't get their Big Macs for lunch because no truck could deliver them on time.

My husband works with this guy Brad who lives around here and has to get to the office, which is here. This is a 2.4 mile walk. Brad had to do the walk to get to work today, or so we thought. At around 20th and 6th Avenue, Brad sees 3 kids, about high school age, line up to board a big yellow school bus. In an instant, Brad decided, "Hey - I'm gettin on the bus. 6th Avenue goes North, I'll see where it takes me." So Brad gets on, goes to sit in the back (of course that's where all the cool kids sit), and pulls his hood up over his head so no one recognizes him, or doesn't recognize him, for that matter. He starts talking to the kids about where the bus is going, and one tells him, "Our private school in the Bronx". The Bronx is the borough north of Manhattan, which means about a 25+ minute DRIVE out of Manhattan to get there. The bus turns west, heading even closer to the office, and the kids tell him the next stop is 52nd/10th. So what does Brad do? He goes to the front and says to the bus driver, "Hey - I got on the wrong bus can you let me off" to which the driver replies, "I can only let you off at the designated stops". The bus continues on, Brad sits behind the bus driver tapping his shoulder every time a light is red and the bus stops, and eventually, Brad gets off right near the office at 41st between 8th and 9th Avenue.

How scary is it that a 24-year old man could get on a high school bus without anyone asking who he is, sit in the back for 10 minutes, talk to the driver and then get off? AND - all the students were in UNIFORMS, so picking out a stranger would be pretty easy to do... Or - the way I see it, how cool that, despite the transit strike, Brad got to work only 45 minutes late and for FREE?

I think this story deserves a "hell yeah".