omahas

Last week, when waiting at the nearest bus stop for the 132, I noticed a warning sign at the bus stop. The stop would be closed starting 4/25, because construction would be starting on Des Moines Memorial Drive up ahead and the road would be closed for about a mile. Board the bus on Ambaum (the road that forked off of this one just a 100 feet south of this bus stop). No biggie.

So, today, I went to the new temporary bus stop. I was waiting with another man, when our bus comes by the bus stop. But not the temporary bus stop. No, the bus goes zooming up the other fork (Des Moines) and stops at the now closed bus stop.

We go running over to the bus. I'm pissed, because I thought that the bus stop was closed. I could see that the sign warning folks that the road was closed ahead is now *behind* the bus (meaning the driver drove past it). As I got on the bus, I asked the driver why he was stopping at the now closed bus stop.

"This stop ain't closed," he adamantly declared.

"Oh yes it is," I replied, sitting down.

He started the bus forward, and probably made it another 100 feet before realizing how right I was...the barriers across the street preventing him from traveling any further were in sight.

"Well, I'll be...no one told me 'bout this," he said. "Where I'm supposed to go?"

"You're supposed to go down Ambaum," I replied. Great, I thought. You know you're in trouble when you know more about the bus' route than the bus driver does.

But wait, it gets better. I think he could have probably moved a little further ahead, then turned left and gone through a large, but short, parking lot to get to Ambaum. Instead, he tried to reverse back up the road we were on. It took five minutes, at least. Somehow he succeeded.

When we finally made it onto Ambaum, he then said, "how far up Ambaum am I s'posed to go?"

"I don't know...I just know you're supposed to go up Ambaum a ways." I'm not your fucking driver, dude! "Call your base," I finally said.

He couldn't get the base on his radio. They wouldn't answer for some reason. Finally, I told him to just continue down Ambaum straight, rather than curving right onto 1st Avenue (I knew the construction was only about a mile, and getting onto 1st would have missed a whole bunch of stops on Des Moines that, it turned it, no one was at). Continuing down Ambaum a short bit revealed a "detour" sign that brought us back onto Des Moines properly again.

Yeesh. I really didn't want to continue driving with this guy who, very obviously, not only didn't pay attention to the road signs, but also didn't pay attention to his work's review of his route changes. Fortunately, I got to my stop in one piece.