Busing: Day Six

Okay, so something odd has happened with my little bus experiment. No, I wasn't mugged or molested, nor did I meet my new best friend or come to the conclusion that the mumbling guy who stares out the window is actually chanting the winning lottery numbers for a month from now.

Nothing that exciting. Mostly, I've noticed that I have gravitated away from the bus in direct proportion to how well my wife and I have adjusted to being a single car family. This wasn't my intention, evidenced quite clearly by the completely unused week-long bus ticket I still have in my wallet as an unwillingness to admit that I pissed away $14.

We just made slight adjustments here and there, as we often to, and the change to using only one car was tacit and unconscious, but is almost complete, nonetheless.

I still took the bus to work this morning, and I might take it home as well. And this itself might become a routine, at least while the Jeep is in the shop. But it's clear to me now just how completely personal and private transportation has ingrained itself in our lives.

Many rightly argue that - even if you wanted to be a fan of mass trans in a smaller city - you could only go so far because everything from the layout of certain businesses to city zoning are predicated largely on an assumed level of personal transportation.

Of course, now I'm scratching my head as to whether we could survive with just one car. Hmmmm. Though both cars are paid for, the lack of insurance alone could pay for my bus tickets. Hmmmm.