Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Guilt on the CAT
Bus logic
It's like math, but useful, occasionally. What you need to remember is that the bus arrival time is approximate. So every time you get there, you have to start doing little math problems in your head:
So the bus either has come already or it has not. The bus comes every 40 minutes and will take me to my next stop in 5 minutes. Or, I could walk there, but it will take me 25 minutes. So do I stand here and wait, or do I start walking? It depends, largely, on how close you are to the time the bus is supposed to be there. Let's look at the numbers. Constants (more or less) Time to walk to destination(W): 25 Minutes Time to bus to destination(R): 5 Minutes Time between busses(D): 40 Minutes
Variables Time to wait for the bus(B)
What you want is to figure is the situation where W=B+R This is the point at which walking or waiting will take the same amount of time. In this case B=20. So, if B<20, you should just get on the bus But, if B>20, you'll get there quicker by walking But this is only useful if we have some idea what B is likely to be. We know that it can't be greater than 40, the time between busses. If we arrive in time to see the bus pull away, the B is very close to 40, and we should start walking. If we arrive and see the bus coming towards us, then B is very close to 0, and we should flag that sucker down.
So sitting at the bus stop doing all this math can give you a headache. That's why there's a more elegant solution. It's the real life solution that you won't find in the back of the book, the one that, if you use it on your test, the instructor might put, next to the big, red X, "creative, but wrong." What you do is this: You peer down the road looking for the bus. If it's not in sight, you head off towards the next bus stop. When you get to the next bus stop, you repeat the process. If the bus is still not in sight, you head for the next bus stop. Repeat until you either catch the bus or arrive at your destination. You have now taken all the guesswork out of the situation. There is only one drawback to this solution: It always fails. Always.
But what if you can't see the bus? Now we're in the realm of Probability. Presumably you know what time the bus is supposed to be there, and you know what time it is currently. Now you have to decide how likely it is that today's B will be less than 20. If all things are equal, meaning that the bus is just as likely to come at any point, then, in our current example, it makes no difference: half of our Bs are above 20, half are below. But all things are not equal. The bus usually comes within 10 minutes of it's scheduled time, and it it very seldom comes early. So, if you get to the bus stop on time, probably B<10. But if you get there ten minutes late, then most likely B<30. There's some nifty probability equations that can help you figure thing out in more detail, but by the time I've found them, and figured them out, I will have missed several busses.
It's your shoe leather
These days I don't do much math at the bus stop. It would probably take me two hours to walk to my new apartment, and the bus takes me there in twenty minutes, so there's no advantage to walking for me. I listen to music or read a book at the bus stop, and I'm a much happier person for it. Still, I recognized something in the expression of my fellow commuter the other day. As we debated about whether or not we had missed the bus, I saw numbers being crunched behind his eyes. He was doing Bus Math, and he arrived at the popular-but-too-often-fallible "none of the above" solution. "I'm going to start walking," he said, and headed off. And I knew he was off to gamble in a game of Bus Stop Roulette. But unlike it's Russian counterpart, Bus Stop Roulette consists of five bullets and only one empty chamber.
See, no matter how careful you plan on being, you're going to spend most of your walking time between bus stops, so the odds of you actually being at or near a stop when you see the bus coming are not very good, but somehow those bus stops are just close enough together to make you think you can do it. Which is why, five minutes later, after the bus had picked me up, I looked out the window to see my fellow commuter sprinting for the next bus stop in hope that the bus would wait there for him.
I'd like to think that in a crisis situation I'd leap into action, take control, do what needs to be done, and, most of all, not sit their like a deer in the headlights. But either I'm wrong, or some guy missing his bus is just not enough of a crisis situation. I was in the back of the bus, so to alert the driver that someone was trying to catch the bus would mean either shouting at the driver or getting up, walking to the front of the bus, and telling her. Well walking up there would have taken too long. And shouting? I couldn't do it. It was too big a breach of etiquette. It would call unwanted attention to myself. It would annoy my fellow travelers. But I wanted to. I felt I ought to. But I did nothing. And the bus sailed on. In my mind I saw my fellow commuter stop running, place his hands on his knees, panting, as he watched his ride home leave without him.
Instant Karma's Gonna Getchya
I felt bad. I should have stopped the bus. I knew he wanted on. I should have said something, done something. I tried to tell myself it was his own fault, that he knew the risks when he started his game of BSR, but it didn't help. I should have helped and I knew it. I'd want someone to speak up for me if the situations were reversed. In fact, I reasoned, by allowing this man to walk home, I was increasing the general apathy in the world, and some day soon, the apathy I created would come back and apathetically bite me in ass. Then I remembered.
In the morning I had rushed off to the bus in a hurry. As went to lock my bike up at the bus stop, I saw that I had forgotten the padlock. All I had was the chain. If I went back for the lock, I'd miss the bus, so instead I just left my bike unlocked. The chain was there, so it might look locked to the casual observer, but it wasn't. The only thing keeping that bike from wandering off was my own perceived decency of my fellow man. But I had just let down my fellow man, and so I knew that when I got to my stop, the bicycle would be gone.
My stolen bicycle actually made me feel better, though. As I thought about it. I looked at it as penance for allowing Mr. BSR to miss the bus. "Now we're even." I thought. "He won't know it, but we are. In fact, he only missed one bus, and I'll probably be walking home from the bus stop until next spring." There's something freeing about being able to pay for your sins. I always thought the Catholic's method of repenting with their "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" was kind of silly, but I don't think that today. Knowing that you've "done your time" makes things better. You can take the lesson away from your discretion, but you can leave the guilt behind. It's over. You're "even." You can move on. A strange revelation, I thought, to come from watching someone miss his bus, but you take these thoughts where you can find them. Hell, I was even a little disappointed when I got to my bus stop and found that no one had bothered to steal my bicycle.
Epilogue: Wash, Rinse, Repeat
It's the next day, and I head for the bus stop. And so does he. I'm mostly over it. The imagined theft of my bicycle seems to have alleviated most, but not all, of my guilt, which is why I look him in eye and nod, and try to work a little sympathy into my stare as if to say, "I can look you in the eye because I am not ashamed. I did nothing wrong. I do, however, acknowledge that it sucks that you missed your bus, and for that I am sorry." That's what my nod was supposed to convey, but I don't think my nods are actually that versatile, so I don't know if he got all the nuances. If I was to guess, I'd say that what he read in my nod was probably, "Hey."
So we get on the bus and both of us end up towards the back of the bus. I pull out my book and start to read, but in the back of my mind I wonder if he's thinking about yesterday, about how the bus passed this very spot and left him panting in the cloud of fumes. But my reverie is short-lived. There's a sound coming from the bus: a thunking or knocking that seems to be coming from almost under my seat. I try to interpret it. Is the engine in the back of the bus? Is it the rear axle? Are we in the process of breaking down? No, I suddenly realize that someone is running along side the bus, slapping its side to try and get it to stop. But the bus does not stop. My fellow commuter sees what's happening, too. He seems at ease with his inability to help the would-be bus rider. He shakes his head and says, "Just like me, yesterday." "Yep," I say, "It's happened to me more than once, too." And that's it. This time I don't fear or hope that my bike is stolen. I don't worry at all. I guess Apathy loves Company, too.
posted 1:44 PM
