Normal transportation

I looked up "normal" in the dictionary. Some of the definitions include 1) "The usual or expected state" 2) "A city in Illinois" 3) "Free from mental illness". Seeing that #2 does not apply and #3 is debatable, I'll go with #1 to tell you about my experience with "normal" public transportation.

From my apartment I can walk to a mall in about 20 minutes. Since today I was in a hurry and Emma was determined to wear flip flops, I opted for a taxi ride. I went to the base of my apartment and lifted Emma to push the taxi button. Within minutes a taxi was at my side. We hopped on for what should have been a 5-minute drive. In my limited language I mentioned the name of the location. As we approached the mall, the road was under construction and we took a very long way around it, only to come to another construction area where the mall was inaccessible by car. As the taxi driver proceeded to tell me a bunch of stuff in a language I do not understand, I realized I needed to get out and walk. So I paid my taxi fare and walked about 15 minutes to get to the mall.

As I was walking, I thought to myself, "It would be nice to have a normal public transportation experience." Then, I realized that having a routine, mundane, boring transportation experience would NOT be normal. Thus, having excursions and delayed arrivals has become the norm.

Take yesterday for example. I hopped on the mini-bus that I always take to get to the kids' school. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the mini-bus stopped half-way there and the driver said a bunch of foreign words, and all the people on the mini-bus proceeded to get off. Why I do not know. I stayed on the bus. The driver looked at me. I said my key phrase "I do not know good language". So the driver just looked at me and pointed to the door. I got off and walked at least a mile uphill to get to the school.

I had another experience about a week ago on a different mini-bus. I must have gotten on the wrong one because I ended up in a part of town very far away from my neighborhood. We reached the end of the route, and everyone got off. I was able to get back to my neighborhood with the help of a nice 20-yr old guy who spoke limited English. In all it was a 1 1/2 hour delay.

So what is normal for public transportation? As of late it has been unexpected stops before I get to my destination. Fortunately everyone in the country has been kind to this gal who doesn't have a clue.

It's just part of the big adventure.