It took three buses to get me to work this morning.

What happened to the first bus, the #9, you ask? I noticed as I boarded that it looked a bit off-kilter, but didn’t actually worry about it. A few blocks down, we hit a couple of mild bumps. Normally when a bus hits a bumpy stretch there’s some gentle bouncing and mild creaking of suspension, and that’s all she wrote.

Not today.

Bump! Bang! Bump! Bounce! Bang! Bounce! Bang!

Whoah. It didn’t take long to realize that the suspension for the back half of the bus was completely shot. We bounced and banged along until we reached the Rose Quarter transit center, at which point the driver asked us all to exit the vehicle. Nobody really had a problem with that.

I, however, was the only one other than the driver to really take a good look at the outside of the bus afterward. The body was dramatically slouched, practically sitting directly on the right rear wheels… if I knew more about such things I’d say that the suspension there had completely given way. I didn’t have time to snap a picture, though, as a #8 arrived just then and I wanted to get downtown quickly for a spot of breakfast.

Turns out I was too late for that, but oh well…