Some buses - like the Skip (the bus that fortunately-for-me goes right by my house) or buses to and from Denver during rush hour - come and go so often you hardly have to check a schedule. Others. . . don't. If you miss one, you may have to wait half an hour for the next one. So when you see one pull away from the stop fifteen seconds before you dash up, panting, it's tempting to gnash your teeth and pull your hair.
Some buses go exactly where you want to go. For others, you may have to walk from the bus stop to your final destination - maybe half a mile, maybe even a bit more. There may be a sidewalk. But you may find yourself walking - actually, trudging - along on the shoulder of the road as cars whiz by - one of which could have been YOUR car whizzing by, with YOU in it.
I would say it usually takes twice as long to get where I want to go by bus. If I have to change buses and coordinate two different bus schedules, it can even take three or four times as long.
But here are the pluses to bus transport that are still outweighing the minuses for me.
1. All right, I have to check bus schedules now, so I lose some spontaneity in my day. BUT I also have a good reason to get closure on one activity and move on to the next: "Oops! Sorry! Have to go catch my bus!" Plus, I LIKE planning. This is just one more thing I get to plan.
2. On the bus you can do other things. Well, sort of. With the exception of the buses to/from Boulder to Denver, these are not express buses sailing along the highway; they are buses that make a lot of starts and stops. Still, you can read a bit, or make some notes in a notebook, or . . . daydream. As someone who had her last TWO cars totaled in accidents (one of these my own fault), it is sooooo pleasant NOT to have to concentrate on not wrecking my car through careless inattention.
3. The bus ride - and walk to and from the bus stop - is a voyage of discovery. Yesterday, when I got off the 205 to walk the rest of the way to a writers' gathering held at a church half a mile from the bus stop, at first I was dismayed to see the road stretch ahead of me with no sidewalk. I gritted my teeth and said, "Great!" in that sarcastic crabby way the word is so often said. But then. . . then . . . I saw that there was a sidewalk - not by the side of the walk, but tucked away behind some trees - not just a sidewalk, but a BECKONING PATH.
4. Finally, the bus has OTHER PEOPLE on it. Now, instead of being in your own little metal container hurtling alone through life, there you are, part of THE WORLD. Yesterday, it turns out, was a huge football game: Colorado versus Nebraska, a historic rivalry of great intensity. As I headed to the Boulder Connect writing meeting, the bus sat in traffic as we neared the university. Who cared? I wasn't the one driving, I was sitting happily watching the festivities from the bus! I could see tailgate parties and throngs of fans surging toward the stadium. Then, as I was on my way home from the writing meeting, followed by a visit to my husband at the care home, while I waited for the 205, a guy at the bus stop gave a shout as he glanced down at his phone, though I was the only audience for the shout. CU had been behind thirty points, he told me, but now the game was tied and going into overtime! Then, on the second leg of my two-leg bus journey, as the Skip took me past the university again, with the game now completed, dozens of fans clambered onto the bus, talking intently about the game, which CU ended up winning 34-31. "That was a game for the ages!" said one. "That was the greatest game in a decade!" said another. Even though I have zero interest in football - or thought that I did - now I was part of a happening: I was there in the crowd for the greatest game in a decade! a game for the ages!
All because I rode the bus.
All told, the four bus rides to get to and from my afternoon's activities cost me at least an extra hour I could have spent surfing the internet and idly Googling myself to see if there were any new reviews of my latest book posted on Amazon or Goodreads, and seething if they were four-star reviews instead of five-star reviews.
Instead, I took the beckoning path.
And I'm glad I did.
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