Bus Report #495

Last night the weather changed at least five times during my evening commute.
As I walked to the bus stop, what started as a light rain became a pelting hail. Hail. I couldn't really believe it, and held my hand out to catch the tic-tac size balls of ice in my palm.
At my bus stop I cast a glance at a woman with an umbrella. I didn't have one, didn't even have a hood on my coat to stay dry.
The woman took pity on me. "Come over here," she said. "It's too wet and too cold, you'll get sick."
We huddled under her little red umbrella and waited.
And waited.
"The bus is sure late," she said.
"I'll take whatever comes first," I told her.
NextBus had said (before I ventured out) that the 10 would arrive in 8 minutes and the 22 in 13 minutes.
Almost fifteen minutes later, the 10 pulled up.
"Thanks for sharing your umbrella," I told the woman, and then got on the bus.
It was warm, but apparent that not much earlier the windows had been open, because all the seats in the front were wet and the floor was slippery.
The rain would stop, then start up again, then the sky would grow dark, then it would be bright and sunny for a few minutes, before the sky would open up again.
You could tell how long people had been waiting for the bus by their level of drenchedness.
I know I had some hail clinging to my sleeves when I had first gotten on the bus.

I got out at Mission and wove my way through a sea of black umbrellas, walking fast towards the bus stop. Several minutes later I was on a toasty warm 38, headed towards home.