Why it’s nice to have a bus option

In an unprecedented move yesterday, I actually took the bus for most of my commute to work.

Whaaaaat? Stasia opting to take the bus when there’s a bicycle in her hot little hands?

Yep.

Basically what it came down to was a whole bunch of wrenches thrown into my morning, wrenches that made me appreciate how awesome it is to have an alternate option.

IMG_8593-1038x576(picture from Trimet.org — and yes, that IS a hybrid bus!)

First of all, Sunday night, I’d had a flat tire. Annoying, but I’d fixed it, and then I’d even checked it later to make sure it was still fixed. Well, sure enough, Monday morning when I went to roll out of our garage, the other tire was flat! Dammit!

But no worries. A flat tire on my way to work has happened (and will happen) many times; it’s just one of the things that goes along with biking on streets that have sharp pointy things on them. I can fix it.

So I fixed it, and on my way.

Except that somehow the combination of fixing that tire and having stuck my bike in a friend’s car last weekend had mangled my front fender, so what had been a slightly annoying baby rub on Sunday was now a hideous, wheel-stopping rub. I pulled over a few times and tried to simply bend the metal of my fender to pull it away from the tire, but without a proper wrench, I couldn’t really do anything lasting about it. So okay, grit my teeth at the super obnoxious noise and pedal harder to overcome the braking properties it bestowed on my tire and on I go.

Then, I biked past a reflective window and noticed that my lights, despite purportedly being on, weren’t actually lit: when I unplugged the light from my hub and pulled my tire off my bike, I’d managed to jerk the wires wrong and break the electronics of it. Dammit again! I hopped off my bike again, already late because of having to fix the flat and trying to fix the fender, only to decided that I totally couldn’t fix the light without another hefty investment of time.

I was still on Division at this point, and when I looked down the street, I could see that the #4 bus was coming, and that was that. I declared bankruptcy on my commute and hopped on the bus. It doesn’t take me all the way to work, but I can take it to within 2 miles — and by the time I got that close, it was light enough that my lack of lights didn’t seem so egregious, and 2 miles of rubbing fender is better than 15.

So this is one of those times where it’s super awesome to live in a city fairly well-served by public transit. Could I have made it to work without the bus? Yes. But was it nice to be able to reset, get to work, and deal with fixing everything when I didn’t have a hard deadline? Yes, yes, yes.

You can bet I biked home though:)

 

4 Comments:

  1. Yay! Let’s hear it for adequate public transportation!! Sacramento, are you listening??

    • I know, right? Though it seems like there’s at least a start in Sac! It’s harder for you, though, since what the Sac area is missing is any sort of intentional urban planning that makes transit more feasible. (At least, that’s what it seems like. I’m actually wholly uninformed on the matter, so maybe I shouldn’t say anything;)

  2. Nice that you had a choice ( and a hybrid powered bus, too!) We have a bus service out here in Ventura County that has buses outfitted with bike racks up front to allow commuters to use four wheels but then ride again with two. But we need many more of them! And good luck with fixing your bike! :-)

  3. You’ve nailed it. We bought our house where we did because of the proximity to MAX. Weather like last night sure makes the train a much nicer option.

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