If you’ve been a reader of my blog for the past year, you might possibly remember that I used to have a lot of fails with the bus a long time ago when I first started using public transportation.

For example, on the first day I ever rode a public bus, I failed to be noticed by the bus driver because I was standing at the wrong spot. A few days after that, I stood at a bus stop that was no longer in service because I misinterpreted the schedule and thought that late-night service was active on all days except Friday and Saturday nights, rather than only Friday and Saturday nights.

Today, I had a bus fail that, I believe, outfails all the other bus fails I’ve ever had in my life.

Today is Sunday, which means that the tae kwon do club at UW-Madison meets from 2 PM until 4 PM. Today also happens to be an early Sunday in September, which means that the qualifiers for the Ironman Triathalon is held in Madison, Wisconsin.

For those of you who don’t know, the Ironman Triathalon is an annual event where people swim 2.4 miles (3.86 km), bike 112 miles (180.25 km), and run 26.2 miles (42.195 km). Every year, iron men (and women) come to Madison, Wisconsin to compete in the qualifiers. For this event, there are tons of streets everywhere that are closed, and bus routes are rerouted so they don’t interfere with the participants.

Back to UW TKD. The tae kwon do club meets at the Gymnasium-Natatorium, which is quite a distance away from my apartment (nothing compared to the distance the Ironman competitors travel, but still too far for my walking comfort). So, I ride the bus from the Brogden Psychology Building up to the Gymnasium-Natatorium.

Sometime around 1:30 PM, I boarded the bus to go to the Gym-Nat. As I was riding the bus, I noticed that we were going to places that were not on the standard route. I assumed that it was because of the Ironman Triathalon and didn’t really think much of it, assuming that I would get to the Gym-Nat without a problem.

A while later, I realized that the bus was driving com­pletely around Observatory Dr., which is where the Gym-Nat is located. I became very much more alert to see where I was going, and realized that we were headed towards University Bay and UW Hospital.

After waiting a few minutes longer, I realized that I was now far northwest of the main UW campus and had no idea where I was going. Fortunately, I knew that the bus route I took travels in a circular route, so I knew that eventually I would end up back at a place with which I was familiar. But until then, I was stuck on a bus miles away from both my apartment and my destination.

After sitting on the bus for about 45 minutes and getting a tour of Eagle Heights and Picnic Point, I finally noticed that we were heading back to the main UW campus. As we approached the Brogden Psychology Building, I pulled the stop cable and got off the bus.

So yes, you read that correctly.

I got on the bus at the psychology building, stayed on the bus for 45 minutes, then got off the bus at the psychology building.

And I never made it to the Gym-Nat.

This is the third time in the past week or so that the Madison Metro system has miserably let me down.

If you attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States and you ever need to buy something from the copy shop in the Sewell Social Sciences building, prepare for one of the most frustrating experiences in your college/university career.

Back on the 6th of this month, I went to the copy shop to buy a reader for my sociological enterprise course. For those who are unfamiliar with university vocabulary, a “reader” is basically a huge collection of documents relevant to the course for which they were made; it’s more or less a replacement for a textbook with materials that the instructor or professor specifically picked out for his or her course.

Being the beginning of the semester, there were a lot of students waiting to purchase their own readers for their own classes, so I had to wait a while in line. Not a big deal, though, and not really frustrating, because I was checking and responding to emails and texting anyway and it didn’t matter that I was doing it while standing in line rather than standing outside the lecture hall for my following class waiting for the previous class to be dismissed.

After waiting about five minutes in line, I look up and notice a sign. It’s a tad bit too far away for me to be able to see it, so I wait another few minutes until I slowly make it closer and closer to the sign as I advance in line. Then I cross the point where I am able to read the sign, and notice that it says that credit or debit cards are not accepted.

I put on my -.- face and step out of line. My reader costs a little bit over $20 and I rarely ever carry over a dollar of cash in my wallet. I walk over to the closest no-charge ATM, which is in the building next door.

And of course, it decides that the 6th of September is an excellent day to break.

I decide that it’s acceptable to wait a few more days to purchase my reader, and add “go to working ATM” to my todo list.

Two days later (which would be two days ago), I grab my keys, iPod Touch, and laptop bag to go to an ATM on my way to class. When I arrive at the ATM, I notice that my wallet is missing. The best part is that when I went to grab my keys, they were sitting right on top of my wallet, but for whatever reason, I decided not to grab my wallet as well.

So I went another day without my reader.

Finally, yesterday, I grabbed both my keys as well as my wallet before going to class to stop by the ATM. I successfully withdrew $25 from the ATM. After attending my morning classes, I went to the copy shop in the social sciences building during my lunch break to finally purchase my reader.

I arrive and it’s closed.

Resisting the urge to just hop over the counter, find my reader, and process the transaction myself, I read the sheet of paper stuck to the wall to discover that the copy shop is closed every day during lunch hours.

Whoever decided it’s a good idea to close during lunch hours when everyone has free time to stop by and purchase their readers should get fired.

Yes, I did eventually manage to buy my reader a few hours later.

To top off the frustration, it’s not even three-hole punched so I can’t even put it in my binder without hole punching a couple hundred pages myself eight sheets at a time with a hand-operated three-hole puncher.