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I take MUNI and BART everyday. Usually I am not a MUNI hater. I’m actually friends with a handful of my cable car drivers, and 9 times out of 10 if I’m late to work it’s my fault not MUNI’s.

This past week has been the exception. Clearly my MUNI luck has run out. It’s not so much that MUNI has had a series of mishaps this week, because that is no doubt the case every week, or so I’ve been told. More what I am marveling at is that I have managed to be present and accounted for at every MUNI mishap that’s occurred. Twice I was on a cable car that got stuck trying to go down California St. and once I was 3 cars behind the stuck car forcing me to do the hilly trek down to BART.

Then I managed to be stuck at 16th St on a BART train that couldn’t go anywhere because Powell St. was shut down after an apparent suicide. At the time all they would say was there was a medical emergency which didn’t make much sense to those of us on the train. What type of medical emergency would cause an entire station to shut down…we were all thinking Anthrax. I mean I’d never seen BART trains go the wrong way on one track since all the trains were sharing one track and to see Powell St. station completely empty except for cops and caution tape was all a bit eerie.

But today assured me I was no longer capable of having an uneventful ride to or from work when for the first time in the 5 years I have been riding the cable car on a daily basis I watched them change a grip on a car. It was pretty cool actually. We pull in front of the cable car barn with about 20 passengers and the conductor says, if you’re in a hurry, start walking, we gotta change the grip. I didn’t go anywhere because the “grip” is what they call the dude in front who “grips” the cable to essentially drive the car. I figured our grip guy was feeling sick or something and they called in a replacement.

Nope. They actually changed the grip on the car. A big, heavy metal piece they just swapped out.

It was like being in the pit while they changed the tires on a race car…only way slower.

Anyway, if you are in a hurry to get to work, or to get home, just look around and make sure I’m not on the car, bus or train you are on and you should get there just fine. Or better yet, ride your bike!