Date: 22 February 2010 19:40:58
I'm spending lots of time on buses at the moment! This is probably the main cause of my laxness in the blogging department of late. I am very hopeful that I will be cutting my hours spent travelling to and from work soon, and spending less time out of the house, but far more of those hours working (and being paid for those working hours!)
I have several options for travel to work, which is about 25 miles away, beyond the opposite edge of the city, and at the moment I am favouring a bus/train combination, with a different bus route in the morning. I don't mind tackling the city centre in the early morning, in fact, it's quite pleasant! But, I am losing the will to deal with the human race by the evening, and have found it's best to get off the bus about halfway back to the city centre, and get on the "outer circle" bus. Which happens to stop a minutes walk away from my house! It looks ludicrous when I look at the map, but time-wise between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m, there's nothing in it. Though, I prefer not to get on it at school out time.
I've lived in this city three times now, and always close to this outer circle route - it has featured a lot in my public transport adventuring! Those of us who know it well know the "Every ten minutes" on the timetable is a myth... in fact, timetable and this bus route are not concepts that have been introduced to each other. It's a regular complaint that you wait ages and three or four come at once... five is the most I remember, after a forty minute wait, followed by a twenty minute walk when I gave up... and they all arrived at the bus-stop I would have got off at, as I was walking past it. It's not a bus route I like to rely on when time is of the essence!
Today, however, I got really, really lucky. Not only did it arrive within five minutes of me getting to the bus-stop, I happened to get on one that was instructed part way round to "Unload Only" - so for about half of my hour long journey we were whizzing along, until I was the only passenger! It started picking up passengers again about ten minutes from home, but it still shaved a good 20 minutes off my journey.
It makes up, in part, for all the hours and hours of my life than I have spent being thoroughly frustrated by this bus route!!