Please listen to what happened to my husband and I on the Kitsap #13 bus this Thanksgiving holiday on Friday, Nov. 25, 2011.

We were invited to a Thanksgiving dinner in Bremerton on Friday and rode on the bus route of #13 of the Kitsap Transit public bus system. We both have Orca Kitsap Public lifetime bus passes, and we use them to cut the price of gas in our economy as most Americans do.

My boss gave me bus tokens for getting to work and coming home safe. So we saved the bus tokens to go to a special meal at Thanksgiving using bus route #13. We got on the #13 bus at Target in Silverdale at 2  p.m. We both showed our Orca cards and deposited one token each.

We got off at Wal-Mart in Bremerton at about 2:10 p.m. We asked for transfers and got them from the bus driver. We always use our Orca cards to pay the buses every time we get on the buses throughout Kitsap County.

We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner and then we walked to the nearest bus stop of Route #13. We planned to take the last bus home to enjoy our meal with friends and loved ones.

We went to the Walgreen’s store bus stop in Bremerton at 7:35 p.m. and waited for the last bus to arrive. My husband had his transfer and I had my transfer and both of us had our Orca cards on us and showed the bus driver. Also we both had Kitsap bus tokens that we put in the bus.

We got on bus #13 at 7:40 p.m., and the bus driver ordered me to go to the bus garbage and pick out both of our transfers, and I told him that I did not know which transfer was my husband’s. I handed my transfer to the bus driver upon arrival, and he told me it wasn’t good, so I got my Orca card out and deposited a dollar Kitsap coin in the bus fare machine.

We sat down on the Kitsap bus #13 and headed to the Silverdale transfer stop near Target. We arrived at 8 p.m. at the transfer spot, and then we got up and traveled to go out of the bus. The bus driver had the back door locked and none of the people on the bus were allowed to go out of the bus. We both asked him to unlock the back door, and he refused. He never opened up the back door on #13.

He told us to come up to the front of the bus and he would allow us to leave. So we traveled to the front of the bus and left. He wanted to know what bus we were taking now. I said #35. And we felt it was none of his business what bus we were going to take. We felt he was way out of bounds in his actions of not allowing us to leave the bus.

Ray and Jamie Souto

Silverdale