Yeehaw! Drivers compete in first Muni ‘Roadeo’ in 8 years

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Ed. note: Ever wonder what your Muni driver does in their spare time? Over the weekend, some of them competed in the first “Muni Bus Roadeo” since last decade.

Friends of Muni Diaries Steve and Amanda were there to capture some of the excitement. Here’s their report:

The 2016 Muni Bus Roadeo is an event where Muni’s smoothest operators show off their skills in a competition of skill, speed, and safety.

This weekend’s event was the first Roadeo since 2008. In that span, however, San Francisco has been represented at the Super Bowl of bus driving—the American Public Transportation Association’s International Bus Roadeo.

Saturday was a cold and foggy morning when the drivers started, but the sun shined in the afternoon, reflecting off the participants’ neon safety vests.

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That time Richard Nixon rode BART

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For whatever reason, and despite the choreographed nature of it, we like when celebrities and politicians (same same?) do the things us normal folks do.

Case in point: That one time in 1972 when President Richard Nixon (a former California senator, you’ll remember) rode the spiffy, shiny, new BART. Muni Diaries Live veteran Peter Hartlaub wrote about Nixon’s visit to the Bay Area recently for the SF Chronicle:

Photos and words from The Chronicle archive show the president, often with his eyes wide and mouth agape, in wonder at all the tech surrounding him.

“You know, it does look like NASA,” said Nixon, as he peered at the electrified route displays in the BART control room.

Nixon arrived in the Bay Area with a surprise $38.1 million in bonus funding for BART, then hopped on a train at San Leandro Station, taking a nine-minute trip to Lake Merritt for a tour of the BART control center.

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