How To Make Me Jumpy at 8am

I decided to be lazy this morning and not ride my bike in the rain, but to take the bus (thankfully my express bus was running).

The bus was emptier than usual because EVERYONE has the holiday off today except me (and I’m not bitter).

Around Baker or Divisidero a guy got on the bus and took a long time to pay the driver. I only looked up because of this. He came all the way to the back where I was sitting and reading (I like to sit at the very back) and took the middle seat blocking my view of the married cuties who like me were reading…

After messing around with his bag for a minute and loudly applying some anti-bacterial gel to his hands, he got out a permanent marker and wrote some drug name down on a piece of paper, then walked back up to the middle of the bus to give it to a woman he had been talking to at his bus stop.

He then came all the way back, realized he forgot to tell her something, walked back to the middle of the bus, loudly said something he thought was funny and sat back down. And started fidgeting to get his gel out again.

I should have mentioned that he was wearing fingerless Harbinger fingerless gloves and was really only putting the gel on his fingertips and was using a (used) paper towl to wipe off the excess.

But the thing that made me jumpy was that I took his bag to be a range bag at first. It could be a tool bag, but at 8am I was thinking “wtf, why is a guy wearing fingerless gloves and carrying a range bag in SF on a bus?”.

To make it even worse, I realized his bag was secured to his person– I mean, he had a locked cable that kept his bag attached to him.

wtf right?

Maybe I’m just paranoid due to staying up too late to watch the first season of The Wire. Or maybe the cop & spy books I’ve been reading lately have got me caught up in them. Either way I kept my eye on the guy for the rest of the ride. (pic below)

On the bright side- when we got to the last stop and he screamed “thank you operator” to the bus driver twice he wandered off and I watched him wander off towards Mission and one of the bus cuties asked me what that guy’s deal was.

I said I had no idea, but asked if she saw his bag. She said she also thought it was weird that it was cabled too him and wanted to know what was in it.

I said I had only seen smaller bags inside and used paper towels… and a lot of hand gel.

Yeah, I just turned a story about a creepy guy making me jumpy into a story about a cute girl talking to me on the bus.

guy on bus w/ bag strapped to himself

Oddly enough, I was more creeped out by the jackass clipping his nails on the 38 last week. That’s so nasty.