make em think your crazy

I don't really love riding the bus in New York. I like the idea of riding the bus, which is why I keep doing it, but I don't love the bus. While I can read, knit, iphone sudoku and stand on my hands (ok, not really) on the subway, I almost always get a little sick if I try to do any of those things on the bus, and since the bus is slower than the subway, I have more time on my hands to get bored.

Also, the crazy people ride the bus. Not all the crazy people, and not all the people on the bus are crazy, but most of the time there is at least one nutter amongst the riders. Or maybe that's just the routes I take.

But I still take the bus.

We are lucky to be three blocks from a one subway line and five from another but never the less, there are place where I regularly go that the subway doesn't. Like knitting night. On Mondays I spend a few hours camped out with other knitters in the dining area of Whole Foods. Aside from the fact that the ladies are lovely one and all, scooping me up into their group on first sight and making me feel like part of the gang, getting out of the house for a few hours a week to do something that is just me keeps me sane like nothing else. And to get there, I have to bus it. So in the for the sake of family sanity (it has nothing to do with my obsession with knitting, honest!) I ride.
Last night I was on my way home from knitting, sitting with the usual crowd of night time riders (one of them mumbling loudly to himself and another just looking like a maniac with his sticky out hair) with my little bag o' knitting and spinning gear as the slowest bus in creation rumbled toward my street. Bored. And since I can't knit or read on the bus without getting seasick, I decided to try spinning on the bus. Someone on a spindelers chat board (you didn't know that even existed, did you) claims to spin all over New York transit so I figured what the hey? Because, you know what? The worst that could happen is that people would think I'm crazy too.

And I realized (as I pulled out my drop spindle and got to work) being the crazy person on the bus has it's advantages. Like the fact that no one wants to sit with you! Though the bus began to fill as we crept our way uptown and though I kept the seat next to me free and clear, no one sat down with me, which is the New York transit equivalent of heaven. Sure, the guy with sticky out hair was breathing on my neck watching me work, but better that then having him decide to shift to the seat next to me, right?

I think I may be on to something. Maybe all those people aren't crazy at all, they just like to keep the seat to themselves. I wonder what would happen if I wore my blue wig everywhere?