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Winter bus standing on the side of the road
Winter bus standing on the side of the road
Photo by Osman Rona from Unsplash
CU Boulder | Culture

Passenger Princess: RTD Edition

Maddie Spicer Student Contributor, University of Colorado - Boulder
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at CU Boulder chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

Is that it? No. That’s a garbage truck …

Is that it? Still no.

Apple Maps said “two minutes ago” five minutes ago, but I’ve been standing here for ten minutes.

Oh my god, there it is.

WHY is it in the LEFT LANE?

And! It just passed me!

Good morning! It is 6 AM!

This summer, I officially became a commuter. Living roughly 20 to 30 minutes from Boulder seemed like an easy commute at first. Then, I remembered I don’t have a car and the bus ride is an hour and a half long. But alas, in my now-committed relationship to public transit, I have crowned myself the queen of all passenger princesses.

I do have a lovely boyfriend with a lovely vehicle, but something about that bus ride down to Boulder makes me feel untouchable.

I have my very own professional chauffeur, free of cost! But of course, I repay them by saying “thank you” with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just been rescued at sea. My drivers just sometimes happen to drive twelve to fifteen other people too. My noise-cancelling headphones offer a built-in soundtrack to my mornings and evenings. I always have a view of the mountains, no matter which seat I choose.

Traffic? Ah, more time to listen to my current favorite song on repeat (currently Rose Royce’s “I’m Going Down”). We aren’t late; my chauffeur just operates on a mysterious schedule that I don’t need to understand. I’ve got time to catch up on readings, to write something that I might hate, and I even have the luxury of staring out the window and pretending like my mom is driving us around town on a Sunday morning.

Sure, RTD and I have our rough patches, but we love each other. Occasionally, my lovely chauffeurs drive directly past me, but we just needed some time apart that day. We even have boundaries set. They don’t pick me up at my house and I don’t notice when we hit three curbs in a row.

On the days where what genuinely seems like 50 middle schoolers board the bus, there’s my regular 225D driver who I’ve never seen not smiling. When I had a bad experience one morning at a bus stop, the BOLT driver pointed at me and told me I could get on while he loaded up the bicycles. Since that night I waited in the rain, the 287 driver always opens his doors a little earlier for me. That one 324 driver, who I was sure hated me, cracked some jokes with a passenger the other morning. Your smile made me smile.

And to the adorable and consistent LD1 driver, on those rare days that someone else is sitting on your throne, just know my mornings don’t shine the way they do when I see you in your stylish sunglasses (but you deserve a day off!).

Seriously though, this is a love letter (disguised as my romanticized relationship with public transit) to every RTD bus driver who has gotten me to and from work and school. I couldn’t be here without you. Thank you to every bus driver I’ve had the pleasure to call my chauffeur, and to the ones I haven’t met quite yet.

Maddie Spicer

CU Boulder '27

Maddie Spicer is a contributing writer and the fall 2026 Social Media Director at the Her Campus Chapter at the University of Colorado at Boulder. As she joined in August 2023, her duties include researching and writing articles and features. Now, director of the social team, she creates content for college students akin to herself and leads a team of six total members.

At CU, she is a fourth-year (senior! eek!) majoring in Journalism with minors in Creative Writing and Cinema Studies. She initiated her writing career in high school as a team writer for her school newspaper, The Yahoo!. In the two years she wrote for the paper, Maddie advanced from an entry-level writer to the Assistant Editor and public relations manager. In 2022, she was an attendant at the Washington Journalism and Media Conference (WJMC) hosted at George Mason University. During this week-long program, she met students, faculty, and speakers from all over the United States, and Maddie recognized her fondness for journalism.

Outside of school, Maddie is a relentless shopper and a self-titled fashion critic. She has established harmony between her passion for fashion and journalism through her articles: "Style, Spice, and Everything Nice." Her interests in cinema and production recently allowed her the opportunity to work in her college’s equipment checkout center, The Armory Vault. She describes her role — in layman’s terms — as “a librarian for technology.” Maddie believes Megan Thee Stallion and Quinta Brunson are her best friends (aside from her truest confidant, her darling mother dearest) and always has them on repeat. When Maddie is nowhere to be found, she is hanging out with friends, eating cheese (or chocolate chips), watching BoJack Horseman, or a strange yet typical combination of all three.