points A and B

"i have a headache. i have a terrible headache." - bruce mcculloch, hangover chronicles

working on saturdays sucks. i know, there are lots of jobs that work on saturdays. and there are lots of different definitions of work and what all that entails...but working on a saturday at a job you already hate 5 other days of the week is just a disgrace. but this is sometimes the way things are. and if nothing else, i am true to my word and will work on saturday.

imagine my dismay this past saturday when i woke up to go to work and my car wouldn't start.

"they'll never take me alive, we all drive killer cars" - radiohead, killer cars

oh, car trouble. the last great unifier of the 'middle' and upper classes. for a long while there it seemed like airports and air travel might be the last great unifier, but no...car trouble wins.
i consider myself lucky that my alternator didn't give out at 2:30 in the morning, when i was trying to get home from an occassionally (frequently) unsavory neighborhood. i also consider myself lucky to know my neighbors and know that one of them (surely) would be able to jump my car and get me to work. which two of them did (yay for brittany and david). unfortunately, poor elsie's (that's my car) battery couldn't hold it together and the charge was completely gone by lunch - never to return.

as it turns out, i not only spent all day saturday at work, but a good portion of sunday in the parking lot at work waiting for a tow truck. when you put it all together, i was at work (even if just outside of it) for a good 10 hours last weekend. as opposed to the usual saturday 7. sigh.
the parking lot at work is, i assure you, just as fascinating as my actual job.

"the pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles" - bob dylan, subterranean homesick blues
the tow truck guy was awesome. like santa clause he came, and - as opposed to unloading his sleigh of magic - loaded his flat bed tow with my poor, sick car. thus began our journey across the city - me in lara's healthy accord (thank you lara), and tow man in his own cab.
our three vehicles - like soldiers bracing a fallen comrade - traveled to the place from whence elsie's battery came. the advanced auto parts in said occassionally sketchy neighborhood.
here's something: parking lot mechanics. dudes who are jsut trying to make a living by fixing cars in the parking lot of advanced auto parts. this makes my life difficult. not because i'm ungrateful, or because i don't trust these dudes, or because they seemed to be close to a fistfight over who would replace my alternator (which they correctly diagnosed as kaput before the computer did). this makes my life difficult because there was no way i could pay either of these guys. not with cash, not with check. because as it turns out, my day job (which is there so i can live and have money to spend on things i need and have health insurance and all that) provides me with no left over money for luxuries or for things i need (like food and health insurance and car repairs...etc...). so i had to ask my parents for help.

i did buy a brand spankin' new alternator at the store. the clerk (who was also an amazing human being, and i don't know his name but he kicked ass) brought it out to me on the side of the building where the dudes were not. i ran on my battery alone to the grocery store and home. this is not a good thing to do. batteries will die quickly this way. but i didn't have time to get it fixed sunday or monday and i needed it monday. i needed it friday, too so the whole 'putting this off' thing was not an optino either.

"thank you driver for gettin' me there" - the who, magic bus

ah, atlanta...the city that isn't manuverable without a car.

i only ended up scraping rides from lara and brian. brian took me to a party on sunday (after i was thouroughly tired and stinky) that was lovely and that i would have felt like a jerk if i missed. lara took me to the marta station so i could get downtown for an audition in the middle of the day monday. my car got me to work and home again on monday. yay elsie.

and then it got me to my sister's mechanic back a little bit past that self-same sketchy neighborhood. this guy, heath...he's great. super awesome. and he was open at 6am. which was good news since i had to catch a 7:25 bus to get to work by 9. well, a 7:25 bus to a 7:45 train, to a 7:58 train, to an 8:30 bus. to be at work. by 9. which i was. before 9, even.

"anyone can use public transport, sweetie" - edwina, absolutely fabulous

i have to say this - marta is not terrible. it seemed like it would be. well, no, let me back that up. i heart-a marta. the trains are great. and generally, when i refer to marta i refer to the train. unless there's a problem on the track (which, really is not that often) the trains run smoothly and on time. they're clean. and they make you feel like you live in a 'real' city, where you can actually get places on public transportation. because, for all that i love the trains and the disney-world like experience they apparently provide me with (it's especially surreal when you go from like, the candler park stop to five points or peachtree center...it's like you've gone to a whole different world), they only go down two streets. and i don't go to many places on those streets.

it's the buses that are scary, or less the buses themselves than the bus schedules. do yourself a favor...pick two places in atlanta - one that you would be traveling from (we'll call this 'point a') and somewhere on the other side of the city that you will be arriving at (let's call this 'point b') and make sure neither of them are on dekalb ave/decatur st/e college or peachtree street and they're not the airport. now, get the addresses for those places . google map them. look for the little bus stop signs on your google map. pick a time to arrive at point b. now, go to the marta website and try to find out what time you need to leave to get there.
i bet, even if it's a 15 minute drive, you'll need to leave an hour before. or even earlier if you're traveling at an off-peak time. this is assuming, of course, you were able to find a route that will actually be close to your destination. oh, a route that still runs since the marta website still lists a lot of those routes that they cut for budget purposes. good luck. especially if your map skills are as good as mine.

that said, for the intimidating build-up, the buses were clean and efficient. they didn't smell like urine. they were alright. and when you ride the bus, you get to play new games - games that aren't on the train. games like 'what's that smell?', 'is she a stripper or is she just wearing the shoes and getting out at club onyx?', and 'i hope know one knows how inadequate my knowledge of bus-riding is'. seriously. there's nothing like having a mini-panic attack at trying to figure out what cord to pull and when to pull it to get off the bus.

but it all worked out. and, perhaps because i went through neighborhoods i've never seen and gained new perspective on those i have, but while on the bus i came to love the bus and accept it for it's tarnished majesty.

also, the MLK drive marta station looks like a haunted version of the subway station in michael jackson's bad video. haunted and sunny. and all of this took me out of work mid-day for a good 2.5 hours on tuesday. not too shabby.

"but wait, there's more!" - any infomercial c.1993

there is more. this week has provided me with SOOO much more than just car woes. but, uh...i'm sick of writing.

i might write more tomorrow (sorry bout the cliffhanger) but we'll see.

i jsut want to say this...it's been difficult finding my point b lately. in everything. like, i figured out the marta, and got my car back, but...man...there's longer roads ahead in the very near future, and i jsut don't know what to do. or where i'm going. or how to pull that stupid cord.

how's that for a cheese-ball metaphor...