Posthip

In my continuing effort to make my life more and more difficult, this past weekend I moved to Oak Cliff (henceforth referred to as The OC). To recap: I have sold my car and moved farther away from everything, to a place where there are fewer buses and trains to access. Smart. I think next I’ll puncture my inner ear and cut off my pinkie toe because as it is now, walking is far too easy. Or perhaps like Hazel Motes, preacher of the Church Without Christ (where the lame don’t walk, the blind don’t see, and what’s dead stays that way) I’ll blind myself with lime, wrap barbed wire around my chest and put rocks and broken glass in my shoes.

Anyway, this morning was the first attempt of my daily commute from Casa de Brady without a rental car, and it did not go well. Hungover, I did not get out of bed until 10:45. By the time I checked the bus schedule to see that I could catch the 11:15 bus it was… 11:15. The next bus would be by at 11:54. At around 11:45, as I’m gathering up my stuff to leave, my phone rings. It’s my mother. I try to talk to her as I grab my stuff, as I leave, as I fumble with my new key in the old door lock, all the while getting increasingly annoyed at her bad timing. Finally off the phone, I realize I only have a twenty dollar bill, so I turn around, fumble with the lock some more and get some change. I’m out of the house and down the street, about 50 feet from emerging at the bus stop when the DART bus, disguised as an oversized Snickers bar with the word “Hungerectomy” written across it, whizzes by. Next bus, 12:26.

Maybe inspired by The Candy Bar That Got Away, I decide to hobo down the road to grab a quick bite before the next bus comes. As I’m walking it occurs to me that the train station is only about a mile away, so I could theoretically be on a train by the time the next bus comes, plus I kinda wanted to walk to see how long it would take. I go for it.

A little way down the road I realize I have forgotten an important detail: Texas is fucking hot. Not too much longer and I realize something else: The train station is about a mile from David and Ross’s house, not Michael’s—it’s two miles from there.

I stop for food, then finish my walk to the train station hot, sweaty and full, but not all that hungover. This is something I learned Saturday: working up a sweat in the Texas heat, as awful as it sounds, is a pretty great hangover cure.

I get to the train station about 1:10 and the 1:11 train pulls in about 1:13. Lucky. Except that the sign on the train says “Westmoreland” and I want the “Parker Road”. I thought I was on the correct side of the platform, but I’d never been to that station before and at that point “left” and “right” were fuzzy concepts, so what was I supposed to do with things like “north” and “south”? I decide I must have gotten confused and I let the train pass.

Wrong. Apparently the conductor just didn’t change the sign, so now I am stuck waiting another 20 minutes for the next train. At this point I ask myself, “Why am I even bothering to go into work? It’s going to be after 2 by the time I get there.” And the answer is simple in that if I don’t go to work, if I don’t go downtown, I can’t catch the bus to get back home so I will have to walk 2 more miles in the Texas heat.

So the next train comes, and I have a nice relaxing ride in the refrigerated air of the light rail. Of course when I get downtown I forget which stop is closest to my work, so I guess, and of course I guess wrong. To reward my fantastic decision making abilities I buy a mediocre but very cold fruit smoothie.

Total commute time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

The worst part is, I’m toying with the idea of taking the train home because not too far out of the way I will walk past my new favorite thing in Dallas, Aunt Stelle’s Sno Cone. 

(Originally posted August 2, 2006)