Entries tagged with “bus” from kotaraindustries.com, the helsinki branch

There wasn't much going on yesterday, I honestly was just trying to catch up on sleep and catch everyone on Skype.  But I did meet Juha (my new co-worker) for lunch at a pizza joint downtown.  He amuses me...he seems so buttoned up and incapable of dressing very casually.  So we're meeting for pizza on the weekend, and he still shows up in a sweater vest, button down Facconable shirt, and polished dress shoes.  (So much for keeping your designation as the Finnish John Morley!  Until you can wear some jeans, a white tshirt, and black Chucks, your Finnish John Morley status is hereby revoked.)

I had leftovers and took the tram back to my apartment, and since it was Saturday the tram was very very crowded.  When I got to my stop, I had to elbow my way to the door and it started to close on me.  Now, most automatic doors in my experience have some sort of safety function where they will pop back open if you apply any pressure to them.  Well...not so with Helsinki city trams, apparently.  I stuck my arm holding the styrofoam food box out first to push the door back open, and suddenly the doors starting closing and did NOT bounce back, and crushed my lunch box and ate a piece of the styrofoam and spit it out into the street.  And bit my arm, too.  Luckily some lady hit the stop-call button which caused the doors to pop back open, so I was able to escape...but not with much dignity.

It was the stupidest thing ever.  I got lost coming home yesterday...riding the same bus I ride almost every day.  I still don't entirely understand what happened.  I think part of the problem was I was reading a book I found last weekend at my parents': "Breakdancing: Mr. Fresh and the Supreme Rockers Show You How to Do It!" 


I remember buying this book at the book fair in 5th grade.  My opinion then, which I still agree with, is that is it impossible to learn how to break dance from a book, no matter how many cool silhouette diagrams it has, or how many times they tell you how fresh you're gonna look. 

So I was completely immersed in passages like...

"If you're really serious about this, then if you want to be fresh, you'll have to give yourself a Breakdance name.  Your name will come from something special different about you or your dancing, like: Supreme Rocker, King Tut, Mr. Fresh, Li'l Fresh, Lady Lust, Smash, Crash, Rubber Band, Crazylegs, Freakazoid, Mr. Nice, Kid Loose, Easy E, Crazy Spin, and Mr. Way.  When you give yourself a name, then you'll have something to put on your sweatshirt."

And...

"One more thing.  Gloves are fresh.  Breakdancers almost always wear one or two white gloves when they perform.  It shows off your hand moves, which otherwise might not be noticed.  There are dancers who wear black gloves, but you don't see Breakdancers wear colored gloves.  Next time you rock, try it with white gloves.  You'll amaze 'em."

And therefore I must have completely missed it when we passed my stop around 58th Street.  And when we passed the stop at 61st Street.  And 65th.  And 70th.  And 75th. Around 80th Street I looked up and realized I had no idea where I was, and it took me several blocks to see a street sign to realize I was about 20 blocks past where I was supposed to be!?  By that time I was at 85th Street...so I hopped off and crossed the street to catch a bus going back the other way.  But the next one wasn't coming for 10 minutes, so I decided that rather than stand there being cold, I would just walk down a few blocks/stops until the bus caught up with me.  I don't know if it the blocks are very short or the bus is very slow, but by the time I got down to about 65th it still hadn't caught up with me so I just walked the whole way home.

Moral of the story: When riding the bus, remember to look up from your breakdancing book occasionally so you don't miss your stop.