Long Day's Journey Into Plight. Stephen Dare Wrassles the Transit System.

[stephendare]

A Blast from the Past.   8 months later....

Day 5 of the Second Thirty Days.  Or Day 39 of the whole experiment.
I Was Duly Warned

Today's Mission.

To travel one of the remaining untravelled routes for the purpose of visiting the Westside Equestrian Center.

The Equestrian Center, one of the cooler projects of the Better Jacksonville Plan is 35 million dollars of awesomeness located off of Normandy on the Westside.  Not only are there tremendous facilities for all things equestrian but its also a great place for horses.

Not that there are unliscensed horses simply running amuck normally, because there arent.  There are however stables and showgrounds for the massive shows that happen there.  Otherwise one can simply choke on the dust and hay while wandering around the deserted facility.

But thankfully, this is not the only attraction to the Equestrian Center.  There is also a freaking brilliant aquatic center with diving boards, etc.  Its massive.  It sprawls.  There are bleachers, and the pool itself is brobdignagian.  There are showers and lockers and lifeguards and all in all it is one of the most pleasant ways to spend an afternoon for free in the city.

Outside the Aquatic Center there are baseball diamonds, archery ranges and all manner of coolish ways to divert yourself.

It is one of the largest public investments in outdoor recreation in the cities history.

So surely there would be easy access by the municipal center via public transit.

Well the early signs seemed to point to the opposite.

It all began when I called JTA customer information.  630-3100.

Readers of this column are already aware that this is the only part of JTA that is in working order.  The only reliably quality run service that is consistently provided and unfailingly knowledgeable are these few stalwarts who man the phones at the Service Center.

Glenda sounded skeptical in the extreme of my chances of being able to make it to the Equestrian Center or the Elysian waters of its indoor Pool.

"Honey, it doesnt really take you very near there"  she told me.  "That it, the only bus line that we have that goes out there......You would have to get off at the Gym or FCCJ....."

Of course being a Beaches Native and a core city inhabitant, referencing either the 'gym' or 'cecil campus fccj' is about as useful as referencing the Seattle KFC or the Rug Sales Center in Downtown Morocco.  One assumes that they must be vaguely near, but other than that....nothing.

"Hmm. The Cecil Campus FCCJ"  I led.

"Well thats at LEAST a mile or so from the Equestrian Center.  It would be quite a walk"  She said, obviously not trusting my iron sinews or steely resolve to walk a mere mile or so

Hmmm, I returned non commitally, while trying to envision a mile or so in my head.

"I'm sorry we can't help you."  she said finally.

I realized that I was wasting her time with my invisible visualizing and imagineering.

"Well what bus do I have to take and when does it leave?"  I asked quickly.

She sounded skeptical but provided me the information.

Its B-6 and lets see.....it leaves at 10:45 and then it leaves every hour from Rosa Parks Station.

I thanked her and hung up.

Little did I know that I would replay this little scene in my head again and again, ruefully realizing that I had missed the turning point in this moment.

I packed a little bag with shower accoutrements and towel, swim trunks and a change of clothes and embarked.

[stephendare]

The Journey Begins

On the Bus, B-6 (I have no freaking idea what the "B" refers to in this case)

I grabbed a schedule for the return trip and settled in for the ride.

Whatever planning might be ongoing within the bowels of the Jacksonville Transportation authority, every single thing that might be done wrong apparently got together and conspired to make of the B-6 route a medley of bad ideas as would make the dark gods of beaurocratic Chaos proud.

First of all, the route is too long.

Way too long.

Freakishly way too long.  As in time.

For instance, starting at the Greyhound Bus station at 11 in the morning one can depart from Jacksonville to Gainesville.

The JTA Passenger (myself in this instance) leaving the Rosa Parks Station just blocks away departs for the Westside at 10:45.

The Greyhound Passenger will arrive in Gainesville before the JTA passenger makes it to the corner of Normandy and New World Avenue.

I sat on the bus as we wormed our way through the uninhabited streets of downtown and then meandered a labyrinthian route through Riverside.

Apparently this route was primarily designed to service the tragically unmedicated chapter of the Red Hats Society, as we drove a residential loop de loop through the historic neighborhood and picked up the mutually hostile members of a now extant bridge society who segregated themselves into chatty little groups and began badmouthing each other.

I sat with a group of african american women in the front who filled me in on the grisly details of the ancient animosities at play.

We all hushed as a final group of the old bandercoots boarded and sat primly next to us.

I made the fatal mistake of making eye contact and smiling.

For the next 25 minutes I was nailed into the coffin of a conversation about the bus scheduler's suspected parentage as told from the point of view of an especially bitter old magnolia.  Her lemony observations, while I heartily agreed with every one of them, were accompanied with dark observations about the class of people who not only no longer knew their rightful place in the world, but also rode the buses with impunity and a lamentable lack of social restraints, the type of which she hinted at without ever clearly describing.

The women I had begun the ride with kept rolling their eyes and looking towards heaven.

Only the good die young, remarked one of them.

The little old lady filling me in on the failings of the modern world in general and the JTA bus planner in specific pretended not to have heard.

As we got to Roosevelt Boulevard all of the white haired Cold Warriors of the Bridge Club disembarked the bus, and I was left not only feeling exhausted but keenly aware that it had already been an hour of transit.

Still we plunged on.

The Bus driver, a tremendously helpful fellow explained the route a bit more.

Apparently the bus didnt go out to the Equestrian Center as a result of the lack of ridership at the furthest edges of the trip.

But that shouldnt surprise anyone, I was advised, as the Bus was useless to any potential customer on the Westside.

Who knew, but apparently Boeing has an active operation out in Cecil Field, and FCCJ has a new aviation campus.  However, none of the employees or students will use the bus because the trip is an hour and a half either way.   No one who works out there wants to spend that much time a day on the bus, and they quickly get a car in order to cut down on the transit time.

I was told about workers at Boeing who lived on the Southside.  They were having to take a 1.5 hour busride downtown, pay a second entrance fee and then ride another hour out to their home in southside.  2 and a half to three hours per day one way on the bus alone.  Obviously if they used JTA for transit both ways, they were spending 6 HOURS A DAY in transit.

Additionally, the driver opined that there would still be more riders on B-6---which is under consideration for being cut altogether---if the JTA at least waited for FCCJ to open its campus.

I asked him why the bus didnt add the Equestrian Center as a stop in order to draw more riders.

"No one has requested that the bus go out there" he responded.

And apparently no one thought of it at JTA.  I realized.

[stephendare]

Part 3.  Mayhem.

The busdriver began to approach the mysterious area of town whose landmarks, The Equestrian Center, The 'Gym" and "FCCJ Cecil Campus" have already been mentioned.

Before we reached any of those destinations, the driver did me the service of letting me out as close as possible.  The return trip, he promised, would be incredibly more distant.

At the corner of 103rd and 'New World' (prophetic in a way) I dismounted the diesel chariot and steeling my scottish resolve stepped sturdily out on my way. I walked from 103rd to Normandy and turned left.

I squinted and tried to make out the entrance to the Equestrian Center, feeling certain that I would be able to make out something in the vague distance.

No luck.

Still, with a cheerfulness borne of incipient weightloss, I sojourned on.

On the open roads of Normandy I suddenly realized that all of the recent bitter recriminating of bicycle enthusiasts on the blogs was in no way exaggeration or over-hyped.

The highways of Jacksonville, and especially its West Side are traversed by criminal dumbasses, barely one step above murderous swine.

In fact, the city is rife with potential murderers if not murderers in actual deed.

To these barely cognizant beasts careening down the paved byways, the pedestrian is merely a target.  A focus point for abuse and practicing pitching arms.

There are no sidewalks in the new world, nor is there mown grass.  The tall weeds that line the street are writhing with scaly life and flying grasshoppers.  There are bodacious sandspurs growing Judean scale thorns amidst reptilian and insectile congregations.  One is forced to stick close to the highway, especially a native born floridian keenly aware that mere penny loafers are not sufficient armor against snake bites.

That was when some group of anonymous blaggards struck me unaware.  I was suddenly stung with multiple sharp welting objects that covered the back of my legs.

As the SUV responsible sped by I realized that they had thrown a handful of pennies.

Bastards.   What the hell.   Why do something so intrinsically hostile and hurtful.   No sooner had these thoughts crossed my mind than a Wendy's cup narrowly missed me as it was flung by a passing vehicle.

I made my way into the brush.

About 500 feet into realizing that I had unwittingly stepped into the playing fields of The Most Dangerous Game I caught site of a modern looking building on vast acreage through the pine woods that line Normandy.

The Equestrian Center?  I wondered?   I could see the building by merit of an abandoned road over which dirt and spotty grass was beginning to spread cover and thought well what the hell, its better than walking the highway with these thermonuclear dumbasses in utility vehicles zooming by.

I trod down to the complex.

Once there I was informed by a security guard that I had arrived at FCCJ Cecil Campus.

I asked how best to get to the Equestrian Center, and he gave me excellent driving directions despite having watched me walk the entire distance from the highway.

I asked the quickest way to walk there, noticing that there was a back road that led in the correct direction.   He told me I would have to trek back to the highway.   

'What about that road?'  I asked, gesturing towards the aforementioned path.

'Thats the Feds', he said.   'They don't want you out there.'

I wondered exactly how top secret anyplace might be, nestled between a community college and a swim center, but I refrained from asking.   The security guard was a dried out bit of beef jerky, and I know from long experience with this type that one might as well plead with a boiled egg to display sharper wit.

I plodded back down the abandoned roadway.

Just before I got there, I noticed a trail in the woods which appeared to run parallel to Normandy.  Better yet, it was paved.

Surely this is preferable to walking amongst the driving assmonkeys of Normandy, I decided.

[stephendare]

In Which the Innocent Commuter is Bloodthirstily Attacked by Wild Beasts.

The trail was just the ticket.

At least at first.

If I was going to have to hoof it a mile or more, it might as well be within the protected confines of this nice and additionally shady woodsland trail.---as long as it didnt divert too far from Normandy.

After a football field or so, the path suddenly turned to the right----directly in the opposite direction of the highway.  I could see that it would turn again in the correct direction and decided to go ahead and risk it rather than  retrace every last damnable step back to the FCCJ pathway.

Butterflies were getting thick on the ground and the mottled sunlight was streaming down in gorgeous patterns over the trail and the ground around.

The 'trail' I began to surmise had once been the military roads for the old base and seemed to be laid out in a more or less gridlike pattern---despite the otherwise complete conquest by nature it was at least predictable.  I relaxed a little.

As I turned a corner, by now fairly distant from the highway, suddenly in a clearing I saw it.

A beautiful dappled fawn.  I suppose it was a fawn.  It wasnt a full grown deer at any rate.

Suddenly the deer saw me.  Wildly mistaking my situation for a disney film, I held out my hand and made clucking noises, fondly believing that this would charm the young deer to approach and let me pet it.  Perhaps we would become friends, and I would come back out to these very woods.  We would grow old together, although of course I would eventually outlive the poor beast.  I would sadly plant beautiful flowers in that distant time, reminiscing over all our many quiet times in the woods together.

As soon as I made the first clucking noise, the young deer panicked and bolted with great desperation.

Dismayed, I heard crashing noise coming from behind me.

I turned to see another young deer charging directly towards me.

As I took it in, I realized that this new deer was not alone.

There were a few others, wildly bolting in my direction.

Then I noticed a monstrously angry looking buck with horns.

His head was lowered as he ran straight at me, his intention to jab those horns directly into my vital organs crystal clear and getting clearer with every nanosecond.

Im not a hundred percent certian, but Im pretty sure I screamed like a bitch and began hauling panicked ass.

[gatorback]

Stephen, I thought you were kidding with the deer thing.  Now, I found out Matt Laurer from the Today show was attacked by deer as well.  Maybe you could go on the today show and discuss this with Matt. Lol