I took a 61B, which was 10 minutes late when it arrived, and became even more late in boarding the accumulated crowd, to CMU. (Everyone, please sniff and snort in PAT's general direction for their inability to run satisfactory weekend service on the Squill-Oakland mainline, in particular their bizarre habit of synchronizing different flavors of 61's.) At CMU I picked up some "work" (actually, it really was) with the intent of Working on the T, since I think better on trains, and also a dozen or so "extra" paper schedules. (There were too many to justify carrying around all the time when on most days I only ride between CMU and my apartment, so I started storing the irrelevant ones in my office.)
Delayed by the closure of the bridge between Level 1 of Ft. Wean and Forbes, I missed a 61, and was forced to walk to the Fifth Avenue super-duper-extra-cheese mainline (61A 61B 61C 71A 71C 71D 500 501 67A 67C 67E 67F 67J 100), where after a chillingly long 30 second wait I boarded a 71C. Disembarking at Grant Street, I reached the outbound platform at Steel Plaza, and heard a recorded announcement to the effect that there was yet another weekend T closure.
Fortunately, the closure was only from Castle Shannon south, so I reasoned that I could either (a) just ride to Beechview or perhaps Mt. Lebanon and walk around a bit, or (b) exploit this unique opportunity to ride a NEW BUS ROUTE, which I had not been planning to do.
My natural indolence (and absorption in trying to figure out the dependent-plus-refinement-typing inference rules for case expressions) led me to ride all the way to Castle Shannon, whereupon I boarded a mini-bus claiming to be both a "RAIL SHUTTLE" and a "44D", the D standing for Drake, which is also the name of the lamented 47D PCC service that was diabolically terminated in 1999. This mini-bus took a circuitous and very hilly route through the middling-quality suburb north of South Hills "Village". Curiously, we passed a street called "OREGON TRAIL".
Eventually the bus reached the mall. There I took part in a crime against humanity, to wit, I bought something. At a mall. I am ashamed.
The ride back took even longer. The T operator seemed severely confused about a basic aspect of T operation: fare collection. The inbound bustitutionist (i.e. the driver of the "RAIL SHUTTLE") did not collect fares. The T operator was standing outside his T, waving everyone in, and giving me a sullen look when I showed him my ID. (The T is always pay-leave outbound, and pay-enter inbound. This was inbound. Something was amiss.) One woman stopped and asked him something, to which he raised his eyebrows in a bizarre manner and said something of which I could make out nothing but what I thought was "Grant Street", which seemed immaterial to the purpose.
Finally, when we got back to Steel Plaza, I was tempted to demonstrate (even if to his sullen obliviousness) the operator's confusion by deliberately exiting through a rear door. By all common decency, one should never pay-exit on an inbound T, and I wished to demonstrate that his method was failing by taking a rear door. Instead, I left through the front door, casually flashing my ID at him, in the hopes that I would penetrate his stupor and cause him to hit the "CMU" button. It is depressing to ride and not be counted.
But he didn't even seem to be looking in my direction.
I walked to the Penn Station busway stop to wait for an EBA. Here, two notable things happened.
First, a Mid-Monongahela Valley Transit bus ("A-CHARLEROI") came sliming inbound on the busway. It was one of the execrable RTSes, which are like fat slugs on wheels, so I am justified in saying it slimed. It had a most amusing ad on the side, which said simply
RENT-A-WRECK
(and a phone number). Very suitable for an RTS.
Second, my EBA, which was late, arrived inbound to make the downtown loop. To my delight it was one of the older funky articulated buses, which I have often seen but never ridden (the articulated buses used on the peak 61C runs are newer).
These were the notable events of the trip. That is all. Lock your windows.