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I've never really had major problems, although once I watched my transfer bus pull away as the first bus was running late because of snow, and it sucked balls because the next bus on the other line was an hour away.

OK, here's my best one....

sorry, it's long, but epic.


So, I didn't have a car for like four years, and I was an avid rider of the #2. One Sunday I got on the bus heading downtown, from the Lane and High stop. I was sitting at the front of the bus, right behind the seats that face sideways, and there was a mother and her little boy sitting in those seats. He was maybe 6 years old.

Two stops later, around 15th, this guy gets on the bus. He's wearing a suit, though it was covered in old stains and general dirtiness, and carrying a giant 80's style boombox. He was wearing a toupee, but it was on sideways, so it looked like one half of his head was shaved, very cool.

so this guy sits a few seats back from me, and immediately gets in an arguement with the woman he's sitting with, because she won't open the window. So he gets up and moves to the front of the bus, and sits right next to me. sooooo smelly. but anyway, he's fiddling with his boombox, and I'm looking at his fingers, because they're all bloody and scabby, I don't know if it was from an illness, or if he just bit the living shit out of his nails, but it was disturbing, nonetheless.

Then the little 6 year old boy says to the man, "Mister, you have a bug on you." I look over, and he has a small waterbug type thing crawling across his knee. I am kinda terrified of little bugs. The guy brushes off the bug, and leans real close and says to the kid, in the creepiest way possible, "did you know, little boy, that in some countries, chocolate covered bugs are a delicacy? ....A DELICACY!!!" Obviously the kid was scared shitless, and turned his head towards the front of the bus.

Then, as we're driving through the Campus Gateway, the man says to me "did you ever hang out down here back in the day, did you ever hang out at those bars?" I told him I remembered them being there, but I never hung out there, it wasn't really my thing. Then he goes, "I don't know why you have to fucking lie to me." I say, "huh?" Then he starts getting agitated, "I don' know why you have to fucking lie to me, I saw you down there back in the day, I saw you a bunch of times, and I don't know why you think you can fucking lie to me like that." This goes on for a few minutes, and I eventually tell the guy he's fucking crazy, and I get up and move to the back of the bus. The guy starts talking to himself, angrily, but I'm free at that point, he didn't follow me to the back.

So now we're stopping at the mental health building, and this woman gets on. I thought she was drunk out of her mind, but I think she was just out of her mind. She sits next to me in the back of the bus. soooooooo smelly. anyway, everything is fine for a few minutes, and then, out of nowhere, this woman screams, "N****R!!!!!" at the top of her lungs, for no apparent reason whatsoever. The entire bus just turns around, like WTF!!??!! This one guy near me is like, "what did you say, bitch, what did you say?" and she goes, "I GOT ALL KINDSA WORDS, N****R!!!!", and I'm like, how could this bus ride get any worse, and then it does.

The crazy boombox guy gets out of his seat at the front of the bus, and comes storming back to the back. He's in a rage at this point, and he's yelling at this woman, "I better never hear that word come out of your mouth again, lady, I've got two mullato kids at home, and I better never hear that word out of your mouth again!!!!" Then he says, "You're worse than this WHITE PIECE OF SHIT RIGHT HERE!!!!," as he points right at me!!!

so, I've kinda had it at this point, and I tell the dude to get the hell out of my face, and he hits me with this priceless piece of smackdown....."Listen here, Hollywood (yes, he called me Hollywood), I have eaten many of you for breakfast in my life, and the next time you tell me I'm crazy, I will blast you....I WILL BLAST YOU!!", as he was holding his boombox on his shoulder. the dude was right in my face at this point, and I was sure I was going to have to fight him or something...then the bus comes to a screeching halt.

He and the lady were both kicked off the bus at the same time, and as we drove away, They continued to yell nonsense at each other for who knows how long.

I've seen both of these characters since then on seperate occasions, but those are different COTA horror stories.

the end.

see, that shit would never happen on a nice wood paneled street car.

a reading of that story would be great if set to a snazzy electronic dance beat.

Most of my COTA riding was on the 84 (Grandview / Lenox / OSU loop) and it was pretty tame, except for the odd Jesus freak.

The 2 is a totally different animal. I used to walk by the Chittenden / 11th ave. southbound stop on my way back from class during grad school. There were some really agressive cat-callers there in the evening, and I got hassled fairly regularly. It would have been a total mess if I'd actually wanted to get on the bus there.

But the one I remember most clearly is the barking guy at 5th Ave. I missed my 84 and hopped on the 2 to get a connection back west down 5th ave., and as I waited for the westbound, there was a large man at the eastbound stop literally barking (no words) loudly in bursts of three. He scared off all the other people at the stop, and kept right on going until someone living nearby called the cops. He barked at them, too, until they threatened to put him in the police cruiser. Then he talked - basically to tell the cops off. Thankfully my bus showed up at that point...

are these COTA horror stories, or crazy people horror stories which happened to take place on a bus?

uh, both I guess.

I don't really have any "administration" problems with COTA, though I did file a complaint about a driver harassing a wheelchair passenger once.
But to me, the real appeal of the COTA is the weirdos who ride it.....those are the stories I wanted to hear.

My horror stories are mostly from waiting for the bus. I used to live in the short north and would wait for the #2 to ride to OSU. One time, at about 8:00 in the morning I hear a guy laughing behind me, I turn around a guy is standing right behind me wacking off like there is no tomorrow.

Scumbags used to try and pick me up a lot too, one time I am wearing shorts and a T-shirt with back pack and cup of coffee in hand, some guy pulls up and offers me fifity bucks, I look in the back of the car and there is a car seat and baby toys everywhere. I said, no thats okay, to which he squeals his tires and screams at me as he speeds off "well you look like a fucking whore." Ah, memories....

I had the experience in high school of waiting more than an hour for a bus to come down Weber Road (I was in the area of Weber and McGuffey roads) in the evening, before I and my two friends gave up and walked home. We didn't have to walk a super-far distance, but it was late evening, and that neighborhood actually had the highest murder rate in Columbus at the time, so that was not so cool.

Another time, this time on McGuffey, I was waiting for the bus, as was some kid from McGuffey Elementary school, when he asked me some sort of dumb question. When I told him I didn't know the answer, he took his ski cap, slapped me on the head with it, and said something like, "if Homey the Clown was here, you'd know." Which was a somewhat dated reference by this time, so I am impressed with his pop culture knowledge, but less impressed about the part where he hit me. This is what happens when you are the same height as a fifth-grader, I guess.

I have also been on the bus three times where somebody has slammed into it.

I was on the #2 when everyone started talking about how the bus really stank. And yeah, then I noticed that it did stink. The driver must have placed a call, because a minute or two later we pulled over where a pickup truck was waiting at the side of the road. The guy from the pickup truck boarded the bus wearing a sort of haz-mat uniform and carrying a box of chemicals. We all had to unboard and wait for the next bus. A few minutes later, the haz-mat guy walks out of the bus, holding a bag, which I can only imagine contained shit.

tuxspeedo, I think that story would make for a good music video theme

oh shit, you're right. I did go to Maxwell's a couple of times....I forgot that it was right there until just now.

last time I saw this guy, he still had his boombox, but his hair was different, and he was laying on the ground right in front of the door to Brenen's on campus. he was wide awake, and yelling at people about some army shit as they stepped over him to get inside.

the "N" lady, I saw on the bus one more time after all of this....she got on the bus, again looking super wasted, and as she sat down across from me, everyone notices that she has this giant wad of cum in her hair...no shit...totally cleared out the back half of the bus. classic.

other than trying to figure out the #95, which i think like three people ride including me...

somebody left a dirty diaper on a seat today. (#2) ew!

hollywood, i think your story is the best. i must be missing all the "good stuff" on my route. i don't have a lot of creepy dudes either other than the one day i was asked if i needed a ride, but i do get waved at a lot by older dudes in their cars.

i used to ride the #1.

other than the usual i don't have any great stories. it always smelled like excrement. some crazy dude showed me all his bullet scars. some kids called me "hip-hop elvis." one of the drivers always passed requested stops, you had to yell "stop! stop!" and then he would slam on the breaks.

on a greyhound on the way into baltimore some dude threatened to stab everyone. and on the same greyhound ride i got a "business card" for a rapper named "raw tina" which was just an index card with a phone number on it. when i got to my destination we called the number and asked for "raw tina," but it was just a barbershop and the guy didn't know what the hell we were talking about.

Boombox guy is the best. My brother saw him being chased into Kroger Beirut by a buncha hood rat kids with the boombox blaring. I've had many a run in with that man.

I ride the #44 Express to work every day and it's very boring... just disgruntled state workers (myself included) for the most part. But we get to ride on the shoulder during rush hour on the eastbound 70, which is hilarious and terrifying at the same time. I've witnessed two minivans getting their mirrors clipped off by the bus.

However, when I have to work late I have to ride the #10, #2 or #1 home, which are always classic.

Three short random stories:

1) I've seen this guy multiple times... I call him 'plastic bag man'. He's on the #10 every now and then. What he does is talk to himself and systematically stuff every single plastic bag from the plastic bag rack (COTA has these on every bus for trash) down his pants. And then ring the bell to get off the bus, to assume... Wait for the next bus to do the same thing on this next bus. I'm not sure if he has a plastic fetish, is legitimately crazy, or has a side business of selling plastic bags.

2) Last summer, I was on the #2 E. Main and within 5 minutes of sitting down, and this big guy walks up to me wearing a trench coat... I have a bad feeling about this. What does he do? Open up his trench coat revealing a full assortment of bootleg DVDs, and says 'Yo, I got Transformers right now bro!'.

3) Again on the #2 E. Main bus, two kids in the back were starting to fight. The bus driver, who didn't look like he'd take much shit, stopped the bus. Opened the doors, pulled them apart and threw them both off the bus, where they continued to fight. I'm sure this is against protocol, but it was humorous.

So I was on the #2 and a guy in a wheelchair got on. Because most bus riders are mentally ill or just idiotic dooshbags, some guy asked him what happened for him to wind up in wheelchair. The wheelchair guy politely answered that when he was ten, he dived into the shallow end of a pool.

Now that's a horror story. I very nearly cried, thinking that this one stupid decision he made when he was a kid ruined his body for life and now he had to suffer these dooshbags on the #2 COTA bus everyday.