I'm always down to save a buck. Who isn't, right? Well, I usually ride my bike or trike to work and back these days, but 17.5 miles each way gets a little tiresome, especially the hilly parts which unfortunately land the worst at the very end stretch of the ride. My legs can really feel like they're on fire by the time I'm hitting the last few miles on the way home. I thought that I couldn't catch the bus to work and get to work at that time in the morning, but I was wrong. Then, when I found out I could, the first time I started trying to ride it, I felt like it was the biggest hassle in the world! I had to make 3 transfers which means I had to ride 4 separate buses to work. I felt like at any moment, something could happen, I'd miss my transfer and be late to work. I was just being paranoid. Now, a few more times into the trip, I'm comfortable with making my trip and have even adjusted so that I get to work a bit early like I'm accustomed to.
On the financial side of it, I pay $1.25 to work and $1.50 home (I think I may be supposed to pay more on the way home, but my transfer works just fine all the way). That sums up to $2.75 for a round trip from Edmonds-Redmond. It's 35 miles as I ride bike and I don't know how many via bus, but I know for sure that I use over a gallon of gasoline a day commuting, no matter which car I drove. Well over. $2.75 pays for less than one gallon of gas. Financially, it would make excellent sense, regardless of whether I biked or not. It would make sense on any given day to ride the bus over driving.
In just the practical sense, it seems to make great sense to me still. My personal stress level is greatly reduced (over driving), not having to sit in traffic. I'm not stressed by traffic when I'm biking (except for on busy streets towards the end of my ride home in the afternoon), but sometimes my legs really just want to stop for the day and I'm still a few miles out. An even better reason that I found out yesterday, is that on the Community Transit Route #411 bus, they have free Wi-Fi on the bus! ON THE BUS! How sweet is that? I wasn't able to get my Nintendo DS to link up to it properly, but I did find the free unlocked network and that means I can bring my laptop or my Compaq Ipaq on board and surf the web while on the road. Instead of worrying about who's cutting me off and why traffic is stopped, I can ride in comfort and check my email while I get "whisked" at a bus pace towards home. What a great bonus to an already cheap ride!
Ride the bus, ride your bike, ride your legs out, but the bottom line is that getting out of your car has all sorts of advantages!
No comments:
Post a Comment