The second adventure in this double feature involves me walking around in the rain in the middle of the night without a working phone. It all began like a usual day, working a double at the Tombs of Georgetown. The G-2 bus arrives a block down the road from my apartment and it takes me directly to work across town. I was worried because I was to work from 10 in the morning until 3 the next morning. As I got off the bus, I asked the driver if the buses still ran after midnight. He tells me in a matter-of-fact tone that the buses run in half hour increments after midnight. I then went to the bus stand and verified his claim. Sure enough, the time table said that it ran until 3:30 in the morning. I was in the clear.
Fast forward fifteen hours later and I am just about ready to leave work. I get out just before 1:30 and make my way to the bus stand. I check my phone to see when the next bus is exactly coming, only to find out that the battery had died. I wait patiently freezing at the stop for the next G-2 to show up on the horizon… It didn’t show. I looked at the table and it said that another one was coming at 2:00. While I wait for that bus, it begins to rain. I wait still. My clothes slowly becoming more saturated, I spend the next hour hoping that the previous two buses were late for some aberrant reason. 2:30 rolls around and I realize that I am waiting in vain. I check my phone again, forgetting that it was dead…
The next option is to walk down to the next major road and hail a cab from there. The time spent walking was the most uncomfortable I have felt in a long, long time. I was freezing. My phone was dead. I was tired from working 14 hours. And I had 300 dollars in my back pocket at 3:00 am. Needless to say, I vocalized every single invective ever spoken in the English language. I think I invented a couple as well.
When I reach the main street (M St.), I find it is just as dead as any of the side streets leading me there. No taxi in sight. Hardly any cars passing, either. I then begin the long walk home. About a half mile into my journey, a burgundy caravan passes in the opposite direction and does an immediate U-turn. It then pulls up on the side of the road next to me. I stop and try to gaze through the fog and condensation that had accumulated on the passenger side window. The window rolls down and from inside the car, I hear a man’s voice say, “You need a ride home?”
I responded “Yes! How did you know.”
“I can just tell,” said the man behind the wheel.
As I step forward, the electric side door of the caravan opens up. I then can see inside the vehicle and there sat a portly, middle-aged man decked from head to toe in Redskins paraphernalia. I look at him and something in the back of my head (I think it was my Dad from 20 years earlier) said to me, “Daniel… This is a bad idea.”
I looked at him for an extra second and said “I’m sorry guy, I gotta look out for myself. This doesn’t feel right.”
The sports fan replied “I do this all the time. My work cut my hours and I do this on the side to help pay the bills. I give people rides home from the grocery store all the time.”
Being the nice (read: naïve) guy that I am, was about to give the stocky Redskin the benefit of a doubt. But I then remembered, my phone was dead. That was the tipping point. Looking back on that moment, I realize that that shouldn’t have been the deal breaker but it was. My shitty phone with a life span of two hours saved me from being tied down in some barn in Virginia and forced to gently apply lotion to my skin. Thanks Blackberry.
I stepped back and apologized to him. He seemed genuinely sad that I did not take up his offer. He slovenly bowed his head, shut the side door, rolled up the window and drove off. I felt really bad about what I did, which was only compounded by my anger with the current situation that I was in. Those feelings of regret were soon turned to anxiety as I noticed that Washington’s most industrious sports fan began driving back and forth down the street.
I got freaked out and ran down a side street. I walked about another mile and a half to a 7-11. I tried to use the clerk’s phone but he refused. I offered to pay for a phone call. Again he didn’t let me. I asked to use a phone book. He did not have one. I would have to walk until I found a taxi.
Finally, I found a taxi about another 2 miles down the road. The taxi drove me safely to my house. It was 4:30 in the morning. I let out a sigh of relief as I opened up a bottle of wine and thought to myself “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?”
Moral of the story, kids, is that you can’t trust bus drivers. You can’t trust 7-11 clerks. And you most certainly can’t trust a middle aged dude dressed in Redskin gear driving a caravan at 3 in the morning. After that evening, I feel that I should direct an after school public service announcement. “The More You Know.” And now you know more about the dark side of DC public transportation.
