Ok, so I'm on the bus this morning going to work, I usually try to sit in the front because I still don't really know when to get off. If I miss my stop the next one is REALLY far away so I have to put a lot of effort into staying awake. Anyway, the way traffic works here is... it doesn't. There's really no rules, it's pretty much first come first serve type of thing. What I mean is that everyone just kinda goes and somehow it works (sometimes it doesn't, but there are VERY few accidents). So a typical situation is your sitting at a red light wanting to take a left. In the US you'd sit there once the light changed to green and wait for an opening, or maybe one car would squeak through when the light turns (people in Pittsburgh call this a "Pittsburgh Left," for some reason they think only people from Pittsburgh make this move). Eventually the traffic coming the other way would end and people would be able to go. Here traffic NEVER ends, so people just turn, completely regardless of oncoming traffic. For the first few times this happens to you, you feel like you're going to die. Taxis always have their seat belts stuffed behind the seat (in the trunk), so you can't really strap in, but you sure want to! Somehow this works, in the US people would lock up their brakes, but here the people just go around you. It's all about constantly moving. I started to cross a street once and noticed a bus doing one of these crazy left turns into traffic, I should have kept going, but I froze like a deer in headlights! He stopped and yelled at me, but what I realized is that you just have to keep going and people here will plan on you not being there by the time they get there.
Ok, but I'm off track. This post was going to be about my ride to work. Bus drivers usually decided that they can do whatever they want, and today mine chose to get into the bike lane (buses can do whatever they want right!). He started honking like crazy (his horn was broken so most of the time it just sounded like a sick moose). This worked for a while, as bikes moved to the right and let him by, until one of the bikers decided to move FROM the right of the lane TO THE MIDDLE... This caused a lot of noise and yelling... And then it happened... Very slowly, the biker raised is left arm, hand high in the sky, and extended his middle finger. I was scared for everyone. The driver slammed his foot on the gas, but luckily, it's a bus and it takes a while to get moving (I guess he was going to run him over?). Once he started accelerating the biking dude had moved in front of some other bikers in traffic, but this didn't stop the bus. He switched lanes like whoa (getting out of the bike lane and into the regular lane), causing all sorts of mayhem to the drivers who had been obeying the rules. He then got next the the biker and started to move back to the right, into the bike lane (I guess he really did want to run him over!). Fortunately for the biker and everyone around, the bus had a stop to make...
