Sunday 2 June 2013

Sitting comfortably homeward bound

Getting settled on the bus for the return journey is a different matter to outward bound.  Here I am not getting on at the beginning of the route, the bus is often quite full and there are several people waiting to get on.  This is not a choice between preferred options but making the best of what is available.

Preferences in reverse order:
  •  standing, never comfortable, much shuffling about at every stop for others to get on and off.
  •  sitting sideways on a fold down seat in the area set aside for personal wheeled transport (yip pushchairs, prams, buggies and wheelchairs.  Dislike theses for three reasons, the motion of the bus is less easy to attune to sideways it makes me feel a bit queasy, two theses seats are harder than ordinary bus seats and lastly given this space is first and foremost for the afore mentioned person movers then the chance exists at every ongoing stop that you will have to move. 
  • sitting facing the back of the bus.  Three reasons for this as well, travelling backward is almost as bad motion wise as sideways, the backward seats make it a bit harder to gauge where I am in the journey as you are past a place as you see it and last but not least they are generally a bit further from the floor than others and I have little legs (so perhaps the more vertically blessed like these seats for that very reason)
  • an aisle seat, now there are two degrees of aisle seat, next to a bus friend or next to a stranger (perhaps a bus friend to be) the former is preferable to the latter even with the possibility of expanding my circle of bus acquaintances.  Why, because the aisle seat is less stable a ride, there is more concentration required to stay in my seat and finally there is the need to be aware of the other persons body language so I can tell when they are approaching their stop and will need to move to accommodate their departure. Mind that does generally have the benefit of freeing up the window seat for me for the rest of the journey.
  •  A window seat in one of my preferred seats.
Well that covers the lower deck of the bus, but this first bus on the homeward bound journey is 99% of the time a double decker so what about upstairs?  I am getting to that, and perhaps it should have been at the start of this list.
 

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