March 30, 2004

A Major Life Change

Starting last week, I made a major life change: train fancier that I may be, I switched from the subway to the bus for my daily ride to and from work.

I'd been having a run of bad luck, subway-wise. I always seemed to get there just as the train was pulling out of the station, so I had to wait around for the next one. The trip requires changing trains in the middle, and my first train was pretty much guaranteed to get there just after the second train had pulled out. At the end, there was the hike from my destination station to the office. What wasn't really a very long trip was taking me around thirty minutes each way.

So, I decided to give the bus a try. There are stops just a short walk away from our apartment and my office; the trip between them is only supposed to take ten minutes. Unlike many American cities, where the bus can be home to some truly scary people, I'd be riding in relative luxury, surrounded by normal Hamburgers. My transit pass works for all buses (except the Schnellbusse -- "fast busses", which I didn't need to worry about) as well as the trains, so why not?

So far it's been working -- but since the bus only runs every 15 minutes, I have to be more careful about when I show up at the bus stop (so, I make sure to take the dog downstairs a half-hour before I leave, not immediately beforehand). The exact speed of the trip depends on the psyche of each particular bus driver. This morning, we travelled with a maniac -- speeding up to pass a cyclist on a curve (on a two-lane stretch of road), and making a left-hand turn across a six-lane road from the rightmost lane.

Posted by Kevin at March 30, 2004 10:06 AM