Tonight was supposed to be the first night of a New Years diet. This Urban Houstonian has started to develop a nice paunch, and is not very happy about it. I've been a pretty bad boy in the diet department, and just want to start eating right. Tonight's dinner was going to be a boiled chicken breast with a touch of Italian dressing and brown rice. Something simple and nutritious. Instead, I had an Ultimate Cheeseburger meal from Jack in the Box, probably a little tastier, but a whole lot less satisfying.
What brought on this junk food binge is a tale that is both comical and a bit gruesome, and I do mean gruesome.
This first day back from the Christmas and New Year holiday, I got up early, refreshed and charged for a nice bus ride in the cold weather. Don't know about you, but I love walking in the cold air; it's clean and refreshing. Well, after a delightful trip and work day, I was ready to head back home for my tasty meal. Well, I was across the street when my bus, the 36 Kempwood/Lawndale was just leaving the stop. I waved to catch the driver, but he either didn't see me or ignored me completely. And, a bit of conventional wisdom I learned from Esquire Magazine's 2006 What I've Learned issue, "Don't ever run to catch a bus or train. If you fail, and you will, you will look and feel like an idiot. That, and you'll be huffing and puffing like a fool in front of a bunch of strangers.
Along with the 36, the 40 Pecore/Telephone can take me home from Downtown. It takes a negligible amount of time longer, but the 40 runs ahead of the 36 in Downtown. It was a bit cold to be standing on the street, and it just so happened that there was a 40 a few blocks down the street. So I walked a block down Dallas to Travis where HPD headquarters is. It is here where the gruesomeness sets in. As I am walking up to the corner, a homeless begins vomiting near the traffic signal. I should have taken this as God's signal that I should have stuck with my trusty 36, and almost did.
I queue up to board this 40, and notice that it is rather crowded. I don't mind crowded buses, but after watching someone vomit on the street, I was a little weary of a crowded, and possibly odiferous, ride on the bus. So I tromped back to my roost at Dallas and Milam to wait for the 36 once more.
At this point, I glance down the street, and see another 40! This time almost completely empty! Well, I tromped down the block once more to catch it.
NOTE: To avoid further gruesomeness, skip the sidebar.
SIDEBAR:
Upon returning to the corner of the aforementioned vomit attack, my morbid sense of curiosity got the better of me, and I glanced back at the corner of the offense. Turns out this poor man was let forth a torrent of blood, no vomit. I find myself a little saddened by the fact that this man is likely going to die this evening. I mean, if you're vomiting blood like that, and the temps are going to be sub-30 degrees, I don't really like your chances of survival. After sitting down I began to ask (read: convince) myself that there really was nothing I could have done for this man. What do you do when someone, particularly a homeless man, is vomiting blood? It's not like you want to speak to him for fear of him letting forth another round. Shit, there are some nasty diseases to be found in blood! Oddly enough, the man appeared to shuffle off as if nothing was the matter. Still, I feel guilty about the thing. I do ask that if you made it through this nasty bit of business that you say a prayer for this poor man.
End of SIDEBAR
After getting on the bus, I dove into, ironically enough, the 2007 What I've Learned Issue of Esquire Magazine. All this deep reading distracted me from the fact that my bus was not travelling the same route that I had run on previous trips on the 40. In fact, I didn't realize my apparent error until we were hurtling down the I-45 South HOV lane. I didn't panic initally because I knew that the Eastwood Transit Center was along this path, and was likely a slight detour that most routes take from time to time. Read the map I always tell you, right? Well, when we sailed past the ETC, I began to wonder exactly where this runaway bus was headed. I ask the bus driver what the deal was. I was right, it was a detour, but much more of a detour than I had expected. In fact, I ended up near Gulfgate Mall. I asked the driver what I should do. Her suggestion was to get off at the next stop, and take another 40 the other way. Okay, no problem, she's going to the Gulfgate Transit Center, I'll be able to catch a 36, 40, or maybe even the 42 Holman Crosstown! No problemo.
This was my second error. She tells me that I am getting off. I look around, and find myself with no transit center in sight. No, instead I am in a rather rough part of town. Well, I shouldn't say rough, but unfamiliar and not so comfortable. She tells me to cross the street to an unlit stop on the other side of the road. So, this is when I find myself at Woodridge and Thurow on a dark, cold night with hardly any way to figure out exactly when the bus was set to arrive; I was damned if I was going to pull the schedule out of my Manhattan Portage. Well, if I wanted to scream MUG ME, that would have been easier. No, I got on my cell phone and called the METROline. Of course, not knowing what the 40 did in this particular part of town, I couldn't make sense of the bus schedule. The good new is that a 40 pulled up less than five minutes after getting off my first mistake.
So, now I'm sitting on another 40 heading, finally, in the right direction. We hit Telephone, and I could see the shimmering lights of Downtown, home of my first mistake and a, likely, dying man. At this point, I ditched my plan for a healthy dinner, and opted for the Jack in the Box that just happened to be along this particular bus route.
The aforementioned paunch isn't a surprise when you find out that the lady behind the counter at this particular restaurant knows me by sight. In fact, she even calls me by my first name.
Cue music:
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows Your name.
Writer's Note: I liked this reference so much that this is a new ringtone on my phone!
Yeah, so I caved in after what was a frustrating, tad scary and more than a little disgusting evening. But after I got my way-too-large soda cup, and went over to the soda fountain for some Coca Cola, I see a lonely penny laying in the overspill trap. I pried up the grate, and grabbed this lucky little guy. It's a 1999, which doesn't hold a lot of meaning to me, but on a night like this, I needed me a lucky charm. Tomorrow, I'll pop this little fella into the fountain in the Jones Hall Courtyard outside my office.
Now what in the hell am I going to wish for?
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