News this week is random notes with no coherent thread...

In the past week, I've been stuck on two Muni buses that broke down. The first was within sight of the BART station. To get to work in the morning, I take the Muni bus to the BART station and then take the (reliable, frequently running) BART train to work. The bus part is less than reliable. I've written before about Muni's safety record: more than double the accident rate of any other major metropolitan transit agency in the nation. I suspect it may not just be the drivers. Part of it has to do with the equipment.

Last week, we were within sight of the BART station, just making that last left turn before stopping. The bus stopped. It was stuck. It's a small hill, especially by San Francisco standards. In fact, I'd say it was only a slight incline. But the bus couldn't make that left turn. We were stuck in the middle of a very busy street trying to make a left turn. Anyone who tried to get off the bus would step out into the middle of traffic, not a very safe proposition. The driver didn't trust in her passenger's common sense so she locked the doors.

So here was a situation: a bus load of commuters trapped in a left turn lane. Some of my fellow passengers were kids on their way to school. When their connection bus appeared across the street, they decided they weren't going to miss the bus. While I admire their eagerness to get to school on time, I question their methods. One of them smashed the emergency exit handle and ran out of the bus into the street. Oncoming traffic missed him and everyone else followed. I waited for the light to turn red before running into traffic.

This morning, the bus (different bus? same bus? who knows) was about halfway to the BART station when it stopped to pick up passengers. This isn't unusual. What was unusual was that when the driver tried to close the doors, they locked themselves into a sequence of open/close/open/close and back again. They wouldn't stay closed. We sat there for a while until another kid smashed the emergency exit handle and jumped off the bus to walk. I followed. Walking is faster than taking the bus in San Francisco. I wonder how many of those 'emergency door release' handles Muni goes through in a month.

The skylight saga (Collier Warehouse) continues. This time, it involved actual contact with a person. I'd done my phone tag thing with the sales rep who swore to me that he had actually touched the skylight and yes, it did indeed exist. When someone from the installation company called to schedule an install, I began to wonder if the sales rep might, in fact, have told me the truth. We made an appointment for between 7:30-8am.

Naturally, by 8:00am, no skylight installers had appeared. At 8:30, I called. The skylight installers were in Hillsborough. Since my house is in San Francisco, 15 miles north of Hillsborough, the fact that they were in Hillsborough wasn't any help. They said they would be there by 9am. You can guess the next part: 9am came and they still hadn't arrived. By 9:20, I was leaving to go to work when they finally arrived.

They setup a very long ladder and climbed onto the roof. I was really hopeful. A skylight at last! This has been going on for too long. And, they even asked me which skylight to change. There are two in the house: one above the stairs and one in the bathroom. I wanted the one in the bathroom fixed. They looked at it, climbed down and informed me that they had the wrong part. The skylight which had been ordered didn't match the hole in my roof.

So...I'm back to Square One with the skylight process. I'm going shopping for a new one this weekend - at a different store.

In the Good News department, my stove arrived. In the Bad News department, they brought the wrong backsplash. The one they brought didn't match my stove and it was the wrong size, anyway.

Stacey