Many years ago it wasn’t uncommon for my mini-van to smell like poop. However, at the time I was driving two or three poop makers around in child seats and a little bit of poop was to be expected. Unexpected poop in an aisle would be a bit harder to tolerate.

claire: thank you! now can i go back to riding the metra…?

sir: you would think so, wouldn’t you? and surprisingly, the yellow line does not reek of urine.

fiorello: poop.

churlita: well, now, if you’re going to throw the bus into the mix, that takes us into a whole different category of stank.

shari: i’m telling you, come visit me in chicago and we’ll do all sorts of fun things like walking through revolving doors and playing “what’s that smell?” on the El. it’ll be so much fun!

cheryl: i actually appreciate the truth in advertising – it’s admirable!

sarah: yeah, what’s up with that mythical purple line express? and congrats on making the red line famous!

I spent a lot of time on the glorious red line while living, and later just working in Evanston. The purple line express seems to run exactly 45 seconds every other leap year.

Long ago I wrote a compilation of my red line (or enroute to the red line) experiences…believe it or not, the post was actually published in some textbook by a professor at the University of Maryland about black feminine archetypes. Go red line!

http://anchorednomad.blogspot.com/2005/02/god-bless-you-large-angry-black-woman.html

As far as trains go, it sounds like your Brown Line is to our Gold Line as your Red Line is to our Blue Line. If the SAT had had more questions about public transportation, I would have aced it.

In the Link’s defense however, I’ve never smelled urine on it. (Although to be fair, I should mention that I only rode it the one time I took my then-three-year-old son on a joyride because he wanted to ride a bus.)

@Dave2: that was my problem when I lived in SF. Not driving typically meant a transpo buffet of BART, buses &/or cable car. And walking, of course.