As I was pulling away from my layover today towards the end of my shift, I noticed one last straggling student wanting my bus who could see me pulling away, but was not expending any effort to make haste. Because we bus drivers pride ourselves on keeping the route on time -(trans., staying on time is next to impossible)- we are not desirous of that behavior. It in fact appeared he was nursing a bum extremity of some sort.

Not yet miffed, being finals week and all, I only looked at him quizzically as he boarded with his cargo (as did the 7 or 8 other passengers).

"I wasn't about to run.......I just ran a marathon."

Then I had to ask.

"....the Flying Pig, right?"

We spent the next 10 minutes talking about how it was his first marathon (I know it was officially a half marathon). He proceeded to tell me about his training for it, how he'd called his mom (who never exercised by the way) who agreed to run it with him. Here's the cool thing....she finished absolutely dead last out of the 6-7000 runners/walkers. He had to carry her into the restaurant later on. That was a neat story.

I told him about Marsh running for Palmer and the whole bus stopped their conversations and tuned in for the few minutes we talked about it.

That was even cooler.