Bus Stop

AUG 2007

I spent most of August adjusting to life in L.A. especially the bus service. I love exploring and discovered new places like Glendale, a sleepy looking city just blocks away. Burbank and Sherman Oaks are nice also but a bit further away. The buses are no where as reliable as in the D.C. metro area and they are often packed to the brim. Many time there is no a/c in the buses and since most riders speak foreign languages, it is easy to feel you are in a third world country. I had bought a copy of Speed DVD for $4 at CVS on a whim a few days earlier mostly to see the scenes of L.A on film. Now, I watch this movie as a sort of bus aversion therapy cause if I think taking the bus is bad now, what if there was "a bomb on the bus"!? It helps sometimes but I can't wait to get back to driving!!!!

Still, I've finally mastered the bus schedule of 7 bus routes :

the 180, 181 from Pasadena to Hollywood and Vine
the 780 from Culver City through Wilshire to Pasadena,
the 217 from Sunset and Vermont to Wilshire Blvd.
the 96 between downtown and Universal City/Sherman Oaks
the 92 between downtown and Downtown Glendale
the 201 through Silver Lake
plus the Dash shuttle buses

I've also mapped out a few necessary places: a Target in Glendale, grocery stores and a CVS pharmacy off Fletcher, more grocery stores off Western, a $1 store off Santa Monica and Vine, shoe stores, Radioshack and a U.S. Post Office off Vermont as well as Ross stores off Sunset or off Western.


Sightseeing By Bus:
Some of the bus routes have great sites along the way. For example, last week I saw all of Griffith Park, the Zoo, Toluca Lake on the 96 bus route. On the way back, we saw a coyote just jogging along over the hills. The next day, the news reports sightings of rattle snakes, bears and cougars... oh, my! I'm not in "Kansas" anymore.