photo by: Mike Yoder

A Lawrence Transit System bus stops just south of Seventh and Vermont streets, Monday, Jan. 18, 2016.

Lawrence resident Johnny Lyons says he’s a regular on “the Five,” as he affectionately calls it — the Lawrence Transit System bus that covers the city’s southeast corner by making a loop from East Hills Business Park to the Iowa Street Walmart.

He hops on the bus from a stop on 23rd Street that’s close to his home off Ousdahl Road, and he takes the long route to his workplace in East Hills Business Park, starting by going west on 23rd instead of east. It takes about an hour to go south down Iowa Street and then retrace the route, back past his home and on to East Lawrence.

It’s Lyons’ way to prepare for the day. He’s a talker, and an observer, and has made many “bus buddies.”

“I’m a very precarious person,” Lyons said. “I love people, I love talking and chatting them up.”

Lyons is also a writer. On the weekends, he writes downs his observations, from the bus and elsewhere.

“I always observe people and my environment around me and make notes,” he said. “It’s been in the back of my mind to write a piece just devoted to the adventures in Bus Land.”

Lyons had his opportunity in November, when Lawrence Transit System put out the call for transit-related stories from its riders. The purpose of the contest was to celebrate the system’s 15 years in Lawrence.

It was announced recently that Lyons took second place in the contest for his short story, which was packed with descriptions about his fellow bus riders. The experience of riding the bus, he writes, is a “kaleidoscope of faces and people.”

As the second-place winner, Lyons received six months of free bus fare.

“I just wrote this little piece, expounding on the virtues of riding on the bus, and how interesting it is,” Lyons said. “It encouraged me to keep doing what I’m doing, to keep writing and telling stories.”

Jacob Horton, sophomore at Lawrence High School, took the top prize: one year of free bus fare.

It was Dec. 1, the last day entries could be submitted, when Jacob decided to write his story. The 15-year-old said he started using public transit when he was 5.

Jacob started taking the bus in sixth grade to get to South Middle School when the district told him he was too close to ride its bus, he wrote.

“I talked in the story about how I’ve been using it for a long time, and how I use the city bus to get to school and back home, and to the grocery store, and to other places. The bus is my only means of transportation.”

For third-place winner Billy Baker, who is 25 and disabled, Lawrence’s transit system gives him the capacity to work and interact with the world outside of his Lawrence home.

Baker’s cousin, Amanda Burghart, wrote Baker’s entry, describing how the city’s paratransit drivers pick him up every day from the door of the home he shares with his 87-year-old grandmother. The service takes him to Cottonwood Inc. for work, and then brings him back in the evenings.

A monthly pass for paratransit costs Baker $68. For taking third place in the contest, he won three months of free fare.

Sherry McCoy, Baker’s aunt and legal guardian, said Baker’s day-to-day life would be “nonexistent” without it.

“Billy’s life would not be what it is now,” she said. “When he got let out of school, it would have been a very boring life for him. But Cottonwood took him in, and it was like, ‘Yay!’ and then with the transit, we thought, ‘Oh, yes, we can do this.’ It has made his life.”

The winning stories were selected from a pool of about 40 entries.