2008-01-29

Pink and Blue for a day

My bike died utterly on Sunday morning and while I considered spending big bucks on fixing it or spending even more big bucks (over $3000 for a scooter, guys!) on a new bike, I had to catch the bus, a.k.a. the "Pink and Blue" on Monday.

I decided to take note of the experience for future reference as I hadn't really caught the bus out of necessity for some time and wondered if the "Bermudians never "go back" to "inferior" transport. When people get their bikes, they'll never catch the bus. When they get a car, they avoid bikes at all costs" thought of a year ago even applied to me.

Anyway, I had to wait about 20 minutes for the bus to pick me up. Strike: unpredictability of arrival times.

The ride itself was decent, bus wasn't full really. Interesting how many more guest workers were on the bus than in years past. No strike here.

Got into town, disembarked. Noticed that although Government spent a ton of money refurbishing the place, indeed there was too much exposure to the elements for passengers unlucky enough to be far back in any queue. But the section where the bus operators could congregate, looked snazzy. Steeee-rike.

Also, and I think this comes into play in light of my bad experience with buying tokens from bitchy staff, but when the operating hours at the service counter are like 8:30 to 5:30pm, then you're absolutely screwed when you're fumbling to find change at 7:00pm and have nothing but 20-dollar bills. Why not have a simple kiosk where you can purchase tokens, sets of tickets, heck even monthly passes? Would bypass having to deal with surly customer service folk and maybe even save money which can be used to hire more drivers! Steeeeeeeeee-rike.

Borrowing a bike now. Thank goodness.

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