Man, my bus ride was fast today. Got up to Van Nuys in an hour flat. Usually takes me 1.5-2 hours. If the MTA was this reliable all the time, things would be better.

Anyways, another UBT from last week:

I get on the bus, scrunch my way to the back, and there’s this young black woman sitting in the back corner of the bus, talking on her cell phone. Except she’s got one of those Nextel walkie-talkie phones, and she’s got it on full bore. It’s eardrum-splittingly loud. I could hear it from outside the bus when I got off. Every little minute detail of her conversation was out there for the whole world to hear. Suffice to say, my iPod could avail me naught here.

Her conversation was apparently with one of her female friends (her “homegirl,” if you will — not my vernacular) about some guy named Reggie that she was trying to ditch, so she could try to get with someone else, or something. Well, halfway through the ride, as we get to one of the stops, she starts screaming into the phone, “THAT WAS REGGIE! HE’S GETTIN’ ON MY BUS!” and the girl on the other end responds by laughing demonically. So she hunkers down, trying to hide from Reggie. And continues her conversation, whispering into the Nextel. However, she never turns the volume down on the phone. So the beeps from the walkie-talkie and her friend’s replies are like the Voice of God on this otherwise fairly quiet bus. And she just keeps on whispering into the phone, trying to keep a low profile, while the phone itself might as well be shooting out lightning and summoning hellfire at the back of the bus. I wanted to see if Reggie would catch her cheatin’ ass, but I had to get off before I could see the conclusion of this drama.