In 2016, urban transit racer Adham Fisher rode on 200 of Transport for London’s buses alone in a 24-hour period. He talks to Dominic Ward about the two group attempts to conquer all the buses that followed
London – midnight of September 6, 2017. After departing from a London Bridge hotel, a team of intrepid recreational transport users are about to embark on a record attempt – to ride all of Transport for London’s (TfL) 593 standard bus services. They have already made one attempt before in July 2017 – this is the second. Adham Fisher picks up the story.
About Adham
“There’s nothing specific about transport I particularly enjoy,” said Adham. “Whilst I appreciate vehicles, rolling stock and various other things, I don’t actually care that much about them. Certainly, I would not term myself a bus fan, a rail fan, a tram fan, or any other kind of enthusiast really.”
Riding transport is something Adham says he does a couple of times a year. When asked about what he does for a living, however, Adham responded: “Because I happen to ride transport for a few days a year, the people who think they know the world i.e. the internet commentators, people seem to think that I’m unemployed, living with my parents and not worth anything. Being a terrible cynic, as well as a pessimist, I prefer to let them go on thinking that.
“I have now held four Guinness World Records for travelling on public transport the fastest, so that’s what I do.”
The day of his 2016 attempt, Adham was in The Guardian – a fact he still enjoys to this day. He bought one on the way, and started talking to his last bus driver. Afterwards, Adham said he “vainly signed The Guardian article and gave it to him as a present. He hasn’t contacted me! Maybe he just thought I was weird.”
It was after this solo attempt that Hugo Marrow got in touch from All The Buses – a group dedicated to riding all 593 routes. Hugo said that the idea could be taken further, and it might be possible to ride on every single TfL bus route with five people, with Hugo settling on five people based on his own experiences. Adham said that whilst he was keen on the idea, he didn’t want to plan it, and instead left that to Hugo. [wlm_nonmember][…]
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The group
Adham said that, as Hugo was planning the logistics, he also did the recruiting. He recruited people he chiefly knew that raced on the London Underground. The team was principally made up of Adham and Hugo, along with their friends David Edwards, Martin Hazel, and Josh Nichols-Ageros – something Adham referred to as the ‘Bustice League.’ There was also a remote support team, who were working in shifts behind the scenes to ensure the team were up-to-date with how buses were running and which buses they had caught. Adham added they had another member of the team on both attempts: “We also had Alisha Juszczyk, who was recruited via a Twitter exchange.
“Something popped up on Twitter about the service 308 not serving Stratford bus station – I can’t quite remember what – and I replied asking if they could elaborate more on this, because we’re going to attempt to ride on all the buses, and I was covering the Stratford area – it was useful for me to know. Alisha chimed in and it is, or was, her local bus, and then she got talking to Hugo, who asked her if she wanted to come along. She was meant to be a substitute in case any of the main five had to pull out, but she ended up travelling with Martin for about 15 hours. The second time, she said she wanted to do it again, and she was paired with Josh and completed the 24 hours. We say it was five people, but strictly speaking it was five schedules.”
Adham also mentioned that he had someone travelling with him as well – Nichola Daunton – who was again recruited via a Twitter exchange. “She retweeted my Guardian article,” said Adham, “and because I’m a vain, narcissistic millennial, I was searching for myself on Twitter at the time it came out. I replied to her, thanking her for the interest, and then looked up her blog, which is her interest in gardening, and the relationship between green and urban spaces in London. I don’t know anything about it, but I am quite interested in it, because there are certain areas of London where you feel like you’re in the countryside.
“She ended up interviewing me for her website in March, specifically about the bus thing, and she was very interested in it. She interviewed me about my solo bus marathon. I then said to her that there was a group attempt being planned. She said if we did it, to let her know, as she wanted to come with us.
“In September, she ended up coming with me for 15 hours. She was quite a phenomenal teammate.”
The attempts
Although no formal rules, Adham said that the rules depend on what one wants to do with them. For the world record for travelling through every station on a particular urban rail network – which Adham has held – there are specific rules outlined by Guinness World Records.
Adham admitted that he doesn’t do it for Guinness recognition, but he did say that for the bus marathon he would ride each bus for a minimum of one stop. When he did it alone, Adham rode buses only, as he thought it would be fun to say that he had spent 24 hours just on buses. However, for the team efforts, Hugo said that they had no choice but to use other modes of public transport as well to link different routes and areas.
For the first attempt, Adham started on route 521 – operated by London General and running between Waterloo and London Bridge. “I actually didn’t board the bus until midnight had struck, and it ended up leaving London Bridge at 0010hrs. The bus before that had left a couple of minutes before midnight, and I thought afterwards that I should have caught that one. I actually would have been on the bus as midnight struck and it would’ve counted.
“I don’t think that 10-minute delay at the start really made any difference to the grand procedure. It took me a while to get going anyway.
“I’m a natural pessimist – I expected us to fail. We travelled on 564 buses out of 593, and we knew it was possible to cover all if we changed a few things. I think we needed that failure because on the second time we tweaked some things and we had a bit more of an idea.”
All starting positions changed for the second attempt, and Adham ended up starting on service 42, operated by London Central and runs between East Dulwich Sainsbury’s and Liverpool Street Station.
The team kept in contact through WhatsApp, though Adham said that one of the issues faced was that he had to sift through lots of messages and innocuous chat before deciding whether to board a bus or not, which he said cost some time.
With everyone having started in Zone 1, by around 0400hrs the team had radiated out to Greater London, and Adham said they were getting into the swing of things: “When we were in specific areas later on, it was a lot easier to communicate. I would say to the support team ‘I’m going to this area next, tell me the buses I have to catch,’ as we had several overlapping buses, especially Martin and I.
“I was doing the North East and Martin was doing the North West, and there were several buses that travelled between the two sectors. Martin caught almost all of our overlapping buses that I could’ve caught as well, which was very useful for me because it reduced my workload by half.”
Adham boarded the final bus – the 298, operated by Sullivan Buses, between Arnos Grove and Potters Bar – which he said felt good, if a little anti-climactic. He added that Hugo was expecting to catch the final bus, but Adham was further back, and so caught the bus to Southgate Station to meet Hugo: “Positioning wise, it made a lot more sense, because if anything had gone wrong with that bus, and we were both in the same place, then that could’ve been disastrous. I think he was a little jealous that I caught the last bus – I’m sure he wanted to catch it!
“I was very happy and proud when we did it. That might not show much in the film, but it was very satisfying to do something that no one else had tried before.”
On film
Members of the team were given GoPro cameras by filmmaker Joe Bloom, who also followed Hugo around at various stages. Speaking of the All The Buses film, Adham said: “It’s 12 minutes long and I think he really has it down to a tee, interviewing us all beforehand, and afterwards.
He knows Hugo, so is aware of his interest in public transport. I think he was slightly amazed that Hugo managed to convince six other people directly or indirectly to do this thing.
“I don’t know how much footage there was in the end. It would be great if the film was longer, but I think people would lose interest. I might ask Joe one day if he’ll do a director’s cut just for me, because I want to see every single thing filmed by everyone!
“He asked us why we were doing it, which is completely natural, and of course we’re asked that all the time. We responded by asking why people stay in all the time playing video games? Why do people go to parties? And why do people jump out of planes with parachutes? My initial response to this was why does anyone do anything? I was quite proud of myself for that line!
“Reverting to my cynicism, why does anyone do anything? Because they want to or because they have to.”
The team also received praise on Twitter from TfL, which Adham described as being “Hugo’s proudest moment.”
“TfL isn’t known for appreciating extra-curricular use of its public transport,” Adham continued. “I don’t believe TfL has ever congratulated record holders, so I thought that was impressive. I was very proud of him, because I know what that meant to him. To me, it’s just something else to use in the comedy show, but to him, official recognition from the official TfL Twitter account I think is definitely his proudest moment.”
Upcoming challenges
Moving on from London, Adham told me that he’s planning to do the same challenge but this time on all of the urban bus routes in the UK operated by National Express. Adham says this would mean a team in the West Midlands, as well as a team in Dundee for the Explore Dundee services, for which he has already started to recruit. “I made an appeal for bus riders in Dundee in a couple of the Dundee newspapers and I had some interest,” said Adham. “It’s still very much in the rudimentary planning stages. If it happens, that would be towards the middle of the year.”
Drawing on the things he has experienced whilst using public transport, Adham started to do stand-up comedy in 2016. “I don’t think I’m funny at all,” Adham commented, “but what happens to me on public transport and relating to public transport has been so bizarre that people just laugh.
“I’m writing a show about All The Buses at the moment, which will be performed at the Leicester Comedy Festival on February 16 and 23. At the start of February, I’ll also perform it in London, because of course everything happened in London, and it will be in a very apt setting; a bus depot.”Adham adde
d that whilst people do laugh, he couldn’t really say whether it’s well received: “I seek nothing further than the opportunity to present public transport in a different light. If I do that, I don’t really care what other people think of it. I think essentially the comedy is for my own amusement. I suppose I’m just lucky enough that some people do find it funny.”
Adham dedicates his All The Buses involvement to John Breen, former manager of the Arriva Leicester Travel Shop, now retired (who was interviewed in CBW back in August 2016): “When I was at school, I would often go into his shop and ask for the most obscure timetables and suchlike. He would always make time for me. Years later, I took some foreign newspapers in which I appeared for him to see, and he asked to photocopy them for his office. He is a brilliant man.”
To watch the film, visit: vimeo.com/237744146 The team are also contactable on Twitter on @allthebuses[/wlm_ismember]
