Jan 24 - The Ride to Work

That was my ride this morning (and afternoon, actually).

I decided to take ETS for a spin this morning, since I'm getting a bit blah about driving, and Holly has needed the family car on more than one occasion - so it was time to test out the system to see how it would go.

Strangely enough, it wasn't that bad.  I am really quite surprised, actually.  It'd been a while since I had honestly looked into taking public transit to work because, well, it wasn't cool to take the bus.  I guess it still isn't, but I'm kinda past that fear of not looking cool phase of my life, and I'm much more into the phase of my life where I worry about my blood pressure and how much it costs to operate my car per KM.  I don't have a good track on the first thing, but I do have a good track on the second thing, which I think contributes negatively to the first thing.

Anyhow.  Transit.

The bus stop at home is basically outside the door and across the street, which is nice.  I don't have the luxury of being able to stay inside while I wait for the bus, but the city has recently put up a shelter at my stop, so waiting in the wind the morning wasn't the end of the world.  So, 5:30ish rolls around and I hop on the bus, headed down town.

Hit down town, miss the first stop for the LRT, but that's OK - there's only about 8 in a city block, so I jump off at the next stop and head underground.  Wait about 2 minutes for the train, and go south to the newly finished Century Park.  Anyone remember where Heritage mall was?  It's now a ETS transit centre.  It's a great use of the area, truth be told.

Short wait later, I hop on the second bus of the day and head to work.  Get off one stop too EARLY this time, and have to take a walk to work from in front of the new Servus building.  Walk into the office at around 6:45, and 75 minutes later, I've been able to get a few more minutes of sleep while keeping my eyes open,

The way home didn't go quite as quickly as I would hope, but I still managed to do it without expending any real mental power on getting home.  It seems that the second bus has a short and long route along the same line, so I had to wait for 30ish minutes before the bus I needed rolled by.  In the end, I was about 2 hours to get home, a trip that would normally take me just over an hour on a good day.

In the end, I think I'll do it again.  Given the rising price of gas, the economics are about breaking even now, plus every time I take the car in the morning I worry that Holly will need it for something, or want to take the kids out, or maybe need to go out and get some groceries, so I think we'll take this for a spin for a bit and see how it goes.

I think I've got myself booked in for 8 or 10 Windows 7 conversions this week, some more poking and prodding at printers, and otherwise trying hard to get the things done before the end of company year.