IN TRANSIT: now with statistical analysis!

I walk a couple hundred yards to the main road, the mighty Carreterra Cuautitlán-Teoloyúcan. Here pass all the camiones (buses), micros (short-buses) and combis (volkswagen vans), which go to many useful places, but mostly to Cuautitlán and Teoloyucan... however, there are also quite a few that take the high road to the autopista (freeway) and go to other useful places, like the CITY. So if I'm going to school, I look for the Cuauti-bound micros, which I know are Cuauti-bound because there's a little placard in the window that says CUAUTI, and usually other useful details like XHALA FESC-4 , which is my school: Xhala is the town, and FESC is the school, and 4 refers to it being Campus 4. There are several other campuses of the FESC scattered around the area. I haven't been to any of them; I doubt their as cool as Campo Cuatro. Anyway, so the transit guy is waving on cars, hollering, whistling and taking notes. He sees me, waves, and stops all traffic so I can pass, like he does every single day, and we greet each other, just like every single day, and he asks me where I'm going. I tell him I'm off to Metro Toreo. So I look for the camion with the placard that says M TOREO. I will mention that this is confusing, because the station is actually called Cuatro Caminos. This comes with a funny story. Pamela is from a town about an hour out of the city, but about two hours from school. Anyway, I met up with her, Jacobo and a couple other friends the other day because there was a forestry expo in the city we wanted to go to (it fits to mention that in Mexico, it's the agricolitos that are entrusted with the nation's forests-- I guess it's a bit like how the Forest Service is a part of the USDA). I'd already figured out the Toreo-Cuatro Caminos equivalency because I had taken this bus before, found myself at Cuatro Caminos, and upon scouring the Metro map realized that there was no station called Toreo. Clearly, when the bus says TOREO, it means Cuatro Caminos. So I was cool with that already. But we get there and Pamela and I are waiting on Jacobo. I call him and he says, “Okay, so somehow I wound up at Cuatro Caminos, and I'm trying to figure out how to get to Toreo...” and I say, “Dude, no sweat, you're already here! Come find us at the turnstyle!” I tell the girls, he's already in Cuatro Caminos, he'll be here in a couple minutes. Pamela gives me a funny look and goes, “Where's Cuatro Caminos?”. The buses all say TOREO, but on the maps and in the station it only says Cuatro Caminos: there is no means of translation except personal experience. That's how confusing the damn transit is here. I love it, it's so unnecesarily complex...

Anyway so I get on the bus and I say, “Good morning! I'm going to Toreo.” And if the driver says 15 pesos, I give him a funny look and say, isn't there a student discount? And he thinks for a second and says, “12 pesos,” or “13 pesos”, depending on his mood. They're all men, sorry ladies. So I've saved nearly 20 cents. The guy gives me my change (on the camiones, micros and combis they give you change, and also on the peseros in the city. The only type of transit that won't make change are the new RTP buses in the city, but at 2 pesos per ride, who can complain?).

There are a few important characteristics of these big suburban buses that one ought to recognise:
1.They fuck up your handwriting because the roads suck
2.Jesus decals, 100 percent of the time
3.Playboy bunny details, approximately 56 percent of the time
4.Loud radio 95% of the time
1.Cheesy pop, 10% of total loud radio
2.Disco, 5%
3.Salsa, 15%
4.Norteña, 65%
5.Other, 5%
5.People get on board and try to sell you stuff (about a quarter of the time its to benefit their AA branch or drug-recovery institution)
1.Candy and peanuts 45%
2.Potato chips with Tapatio-type salsa 8%
3.Gelatin/Flan 14%
4.Motivational books 3%
5.Religion 30%

“Te han asaltado?” is a question I'm asked with relative frequency. I am aware of such events having befallen my friends and acquaintances. In Oswaldo's case (don't you love his name?!) he was walking home from the bus stop after dark. They took his wallet and cell phone and he was kind of shaken up. In the case of Itzel, Lili and Gloria, their bus was indeed jacked. This leads to the point, which is that in fact the big janky buses do from time to time get assaulted. They say the key is to keep your backpack out of sight and keep a 20-peso note in your pocket to hand off to whoever is doing the assaulting. At night the combis are perfectly safe (because it's super hard to rob people if you can't even stand up all the way, and furthermore it's not worth your trouble to rob 1-8 people. They say the Metro is super safe at night too, because there's security cameras and stuff. I'm not totally sure that security cameras really make anything safer, but whatever.

One last anecdote before I go to class: I got on a micro bound for Metro Politécnico one aftern oon, and as the sun was setting we stopped at a gas station to pick up a whole bunch of passengers. The sky was all colors and drama, and I was standing up in the back of the bus, when the rear doors open and somebody starts to get on. I turn around to take a look and it is Jesus Christ, stepping onto the bus in his long robes, angelic pained expression and uplifted hand. After a half-second freakout I realize that it's a life-size wooden statue being shoved onto the bus by a skinny kid of maybe 16. I am still totally confused but completely happy to spend the rest of my bus ride standing next to Jesus, suffering the same pothole-ridden roads and abuses of inertia as everyone else. I tried to take some pictures but it was impossible to do so subtly and they turned out awful. But that's my bus story. Cómo ves...