$2.50 to take you anywhere for 2.5 hours (Patreon)

When we were high schoolers in Seattle, Dylan Meconis and I made a few trips down to Portland. We’d take the train to stay with some comics friends we’d made over the internet (still a new and novel [and risky] thing in the late 90s/early 00s! Especially for a pair of teenage girls) and I remember once they gave us a booklet of bus tickets so we could get around town on our own. My memory says that back then the bus cost under a dollar, maybe even .75 cents, but that could be me looking at the past with my “Things were so much CHEAPER then!!1!” goggles on. It was definitely nowhere near the $2.50 for 2.5 hours it is now. 

I used to be a daily bike rider for the first half decade I lived here because I couldn’t afford to ride the bus twice (or more) times a day, every day, but the last half decade I’ve gotten so much more tired than I ever thought I could and my income became much more stable (✨THANKS FOR BEING A PATRON✨) and now I find myself a daily bus commuter, using Trimet’s app to buy weeks’ worth of All Day Passes ($5) at a time. 

I sketch the other riders, I eavesdrop on conversations, I dick on my phone, I have interesting discussions with strangers, I get sexually harassed, I embroider, I make friends, I cry, I rest, I see my city on the bus. 

Yesterday I was freezing cold from waiting at the stop to go to work after getting my hair cut. A moment after I sat down at my seat, the heater turned on and it was one of the most physically pleasurable experiences I’ve ever had, like being rolled up in a hot, fluffy blanket that was also a hug. A big warm hug from my bus, from my city. 

(A draft of this was originally posted on Instagram)