bus blooper: a nice story

So this is obviously a very rare occurrence, but something not bad happened to me on a bus today.  I had just hit the dreaded black hole of buses on George Street (which occurs between roughly 8:03 and 8:10 am at Wynyard -- a monstrously long time for there not to be a bus to Broadway on a road that should be dedicated to nothing but buses to Broadway -- or whenever the 433 goes past) and made up my mind the best thing to do would be to hop one of the buses that stops at Central and at least get myself closer in case I had to grab a cab.  However (here comes the happy part!) just south of World Square I noticed that a 440 was tailing us.  I promptly pushed the button, stood and looked out the window at the driver of the 440 (which was now in the lane next to us) and made rapid, enthusiastic hand gestures to tell him I needed to get on his bus at the next stop.  I'm not sure if he understood fully, but he did stop at the next stop and I was able to run back and get on the 440 to Broadway.

It was only in retrospect I realized that the 440 had evidently made it through the black hole of buses on George Street.  How precisely this happened remains an absolute mystery.