(dave e)

getting there

On the first day of class, the bus opted not to stop for me. I walked back home over the re-frozen peaks of grey slush, drove to campus, and coughed up the parking rates. The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority has since responded to the email in which they were notified of their driver's oversight.

On the second day of class, the first and second buses were so late, my eight or nine mile commute took two and a half hours. If memory serves (nb, it too rarely does), the temperature was in the low teens, and a substantial portion of those two and half hours passed while I waited at bus stops.

On the third day of class, the bus was simply too late. I walked home again, unhappily faced with the unwise decision to forgo heavy boots, having been led to believe that the melt had been more thoroughgoing. Again, paid to park in the garage.

On the fourth day of class, the first bus, already late to my stop, became increasingly late as hordes of profoundly slow passengers boarded at nearly every stop. Sitting in inbound traffic, waiting as the driver navigated around an inexplicably stalled car in the middle of a primary road, I watched the bus I had hoped to ride to campus pass in the other direction. I took the train to College Park and walked the half-mile to campus from the station.

In light of the above, (dave e) will follow the exploits of a bus-riding man-about-town this semester. This theme (or "meme" as people seem to have taken to calling these things) will very likely not be addressed all that regularly; that is to say, only the squeaky wheels, so to speak, will get the grease.

It seems right to mention that all this whining from me may take too lightly the fact that many of the people on the bus with me don't have the luxury of walking back home to hop in a reliable, if small-ish Japanese car, if the public transportation gods let them down. I don't mean to do that. Every time some elderly man struggles up the steps with his four grocery bags, my transportation options seem to me pretty vast. It also bears pointing out that I had the option to purchase a campus parking permit.

Those don't entirely mitigate my disappointment. I got on the bus for sound reasons. I got one more car off the road. I get work done on the bus. I don't sweat other drivers on the bus. I save serious money by skipping the steep campus parking costs.

This time, though, I wonder.

Posted by dave at February 5, 2004 5:22 PM | TrackBack