Don't pass me by, don't make me cry, don't make me blue....

On Monday morning I forced myself out of bed early to ride the bus to work (did I mention that it was a Monday morning? are you impressed?), and by the time I got to my transfer point at the university I was feeling pretty good about the day and good about myself. I waited in the bus stop shelter because it was a somewhat chilly morning and I wanted to stay as warm as possible. I saw my bus coming and stepped out of the shelter expecting it to stop for me, but it just cruised on by without even slowing down. It wasn't dark outside, and I had stepped out onto the sidewalk before he reached the stop, but he kept going. I called UTA to report the incident and figure out a plan B, and was informed that if I'm not standing right next to the bus stop sign, the bus driver doesn't have to stop--even if I'm in the bus shelter (??!?). So this puts a damper on my motivation to keep riding the bus during the winter--when it's colder and windier and snowier and darker I'm going to have to stand out in the weather next to the sign in order to ensure I'm not left behind (particularly at this stop, which is at a blind corner which makes seeing the approaching bus impossible until it's already very close, at which point there's no longer time to move over by the bus stop sign before the bus is gone). The UTA representative told me which bus to get on to get back to my house as quickly as possible so I could drive to work, and when I sat down on said bus there was a new sign on the announcements wall that seemed to be speaking directly to angry little me:

Why even have bus shelters that are more than five feet from the bus stop sign if that means that people in the shelter are eligible for abandonment? I wonder if this is some new policy--until Monday I'd never seen UTA informational signs that say these things, and I'd never been passed over at a bus stop.

At any rate--important to know, whether or not the policy is reasonable or fair. I was 45 minutes late to work and missed a company meeting. Not a good day in my relationship with UTA.

The rest of the bus riding week was great--once I manage to get myself out of bed and out the door, the rest is generally easy and enjoyable--I have a short walk to my first stop, a short wait at my transfer point, and once I get off the second bus I'm more awake, and it's a bit warmer and a bit brighter outside, and I enjoy the 13-minute walk to work. I even rode the bus on Friday carrying food for a church event after work, then took the bus after work directly to the church (only to learn that the event was happening at a different church--but of course I can't blame UTA for that). I was rescued by a friend who happened to be there and headed in the same direction, and the evening played out fine, though it is worth noting again that my lack of a smartphone makes me less independent as a bus rider--I needed help from car-driving friends in order to get to and from a destination for which I didn't know the local bus routes. Again, there's a certain humility that comes with deciding to be a regular bus rider. You're probably going to get stranded at some point, no matter how careful you are, and will have to beg a car driver for rescue. It comes with the territory, I think. I'm grateful for mercy, but hope I have to use it as little as possible. I like feeling independent.

Another great thing that happened last week was a meeting of the LDS Earth Stewardship group last Saturday. I had a good chat with Soren Simonsen, who dreamed up the idea of the Hive Pass and after years of promoting it, got Mayor Becker to try it out for the first time this year. He noted that most of those who bought Hive Passes were already regular bus riders, so not much was gained as far as getting cars off the road--the trick he's trying to figure out is how to get new people to give mass transit a serious try. He feels strongly that the system needs to be much more robust before we can expect people with access to cars to willingly throw themselves onto its mercy. That was exciting to hear, because it's just what I've been hoping for--the inconveniences I put up with aren't awful for someone like me who has no spouse or children needing me to be home at a reasonable hour after work--I just get stuff done on the bus and get home later and it's all okay. But the current system is so poor at getting people where they need to go on enough days of the year--committing to regular use of such a system when you have more pressures in your life than I do--I'd call it unreasonable. I hope he prevails and gets the legislature to devote more money to increasing the coverage of routes and the frequency of buses. It will be costly, but we have to decide to make it reasonably convenient before we can expect a surge in riders.

Oh, and stop leaving riders behind at bus stops. That's another good idea.

More confession, more repentance, more bus arts and crafts.

So, I fell off the wagon (bus) two months ago, and it's so far away now that I might need to charter a plane to catch up.....

The day after the Clear the Air Challenge ended, I was walking around my neighborhood in the dark, really fast (I always walk really fast) and clobbered my big toe on a sidewalk slab sticking up. There was a lot of pain and an alarming popping sensation when I bent my toe, and though the doctor determined it was only a bad sprain, it made walking fast difficult for some time. And getting to/from work on the most direct bus route requires quite a bit of very quick walking. So I let myself off the bus-riding hook "just for a couple weeks," and then I fell out of the habit, fell back into my late-night habits, and that combined with my recent difficulty sleeping, quickly made bus riding seem like an ordeal not to be borne. (Ridiculous, yes, considering that so many people who ride the bus are single parents working two and three jobs and sleeping hardly at all, but I never claimed to be anything but ridiculous.) My toe was 100% fine by the end of August, but I kept driving. There was guilt, but it was dwarfed by bad habits and exhaustion from chronic sleep deprivation.

So a stellar bus riding July was followed by an awful August and September. I skipped out (not entirely unconsciously) on the hottest month of the year, August, when reducing air pollution is extra important, and now the weather I love has arrived. It's all so convenient to reform now, right? But the self-punishment must end. I'm finally sleeping a bit better and so no longer have any good excuses. I will aim to do very well in the autumn and will do my best in winter as well, when the very worst pollution happens. I will see if I can make up the lost rides, or at least get close, so that my Hive Pass financial investment will not be a bad one by the time it expires.

That reminds me--the Hive Pass currently is only slated to be available through September 30, so get yours soon if you want one! I am resolved to cease my hypocritical streak starting next week, so I can in good conscience evangelize for public transit again....

To launch my renewed resolution, here's a bit of inspiration--a reminder of all that can be accomplished during one's time on public transit if one is focused and determined. Who knew a crocheted wedding dress could be so beautiful and within the reach of a busy working woman? Yes, public transit has its inconveniences, but it offers in exchange both hands free and no requirement to watch the road. Time to write the Great American Novel.... or tat the Great American Doily....

Ninety-third runner-up....for the next hour or so.

The Clear the Air Challenge ended yesterday, and participants have until August 6th to log in and enter any unrecorded eligible pollution-reducing trips they made in July. I finished entering my trips yesterday, and they came to a grand total of 117. As others log in and add their unreported trips, I'm quickly getting shoved out of the top 100. Though this is a good sign that so many people worked so hard at this, I wanted to post proof of my total for posterity....

Are you impressed, posterity? Walking and biking and mass transit are definitely less fun in the hottest part of the summer and the coldest part of the winter, but those are the two times we in the Salt Lake Valley most need to cut back on car use. I could have done more, but doing this much felt good, and the competitive element definitely made me try harder.

It was mostly trip chaining, public transit, and walking. One or two eliminated trips and carpool rides.

How hardy are you?

In case anyone's reading this, be reminded that *%#!! UTA doesn't think that running buses on holidays makes sense, so tomorrow (Pioneer Day) will have severely limited service: trains will be running on a Saturday schedule and buses on a Sunday schedule. And many buses have no Sunday service at all. So if you don't have a bike or carpool options, you can drive, or spend the day like a pioneer.......don your bonnet

and walk

and walk

and walk

and walk

aaaaaand walk.

No remote-controlled double-decker extra-wide dirigibles on the bus.

The bandwagon's half empty! Hop on, and count it as carpooling!

Just ten more days left in the Utah Clear the Air Challenge. The results thus far have been really disappointing, to put it bluntly. We are far behind last year in participation levels and even further behind the slightly higher goals set for this year. Please sign up and participate! It's events like this that bring us together as a community to collectively reimagine our lives in this pollution-prone valley and support each other in making gradual but meaningful changes. We need to do this. Air pollution is one of the great moral challenges of our times, one on which each of us will eventually be judged by future generations and (I believe) by God. We need to be able to tell our children and grandchildren that we accepted some inconvenience and a little extra work in order to live in a way that helped preserved our world and their health.

I've been trying to do well at this, but I've been far from perfect, and there is no way I should currently be in the top 100. But low participation this year has somehow put me there.

Knock me out of there! I'm not worthy!

You can sign up any time in July, and any measures you've taken in July to cut your car pollution you can retroactively claim as part of your tally. Those measures include carpooling (for anyone in the car except the driver), riding public transit, biking, walking, telecommuting, trip chaining (doing multiple errands by car without returning home between errands), and eliminating trips altogether (for example, making the effort to bring a lunch with you to work if you normally drive to a restaurant for lunch). The basic guidelines and the rules for logging your efforts are here. If you've made a particular eligible trip more than one day you can click on multiple days on the calendar and enter it just once. They also have a smartphone app that helps log new trips, though I don't have a smartphone, so I can't say how well that works.

Also, there are fabulous prizes.   :)




P.S. There's an important trip tracking tip that I'm having trouble linking to, so I'll add it as a comment on this post. It explains how you should enter a trip that involves multiple modes of travel (for example, walking/biking to the bus stop, then taking the bus, then returning in reverse order).

The Great Tomato Bible Disaster of 2014.

Forbidden fruit juice Bible stain.

I was so proud of myself yesterday morning. I got everything ready to go the night before and got up extra early so I could ride the bus across the Avenues to the community garden, water my baby plants, and then hurry down the hill to catch my normal bus to work (trip chaining on the bus! the Clear the Air people will have to give me like a million points). My trusty NIV Study Bible was in my bag, as well as my lunch, which included a beautiful juicy heirloom tomato in a tupperware. Well, actually the tomato was in one of the recycled grocery store deli plastic containers that I use as tupperwares because I'm cheap (see also The Great Yogurt Explosion of 2014)--containers that I know from sad experience should not be used to hold juicy things....but that tomato was only juicy on the inside! How was I to anticipate that sprinting eight blocks downhill with a delicate tomato bouncing around in a tupperware would cause it to bleed

all

over

my

Bible?

Kinda pretty, but not so portable anymore.

And all over my other stuff, too. By the time I noticed the gore fest inside my bag the poor tomato looked worse than stewed and had to be chucked. The Bible was the hardest to clean, and now it's all misshapen and sad from its tomato-blood and water baptisms. Thankfully I only paid $5 for it used on Amazon, so if I have to replace it it's no tragedy, but I feel that in the name of keepin' it real I should offer up my stupidity as a (humorous) cautionary tale, and remind all that while bus riding can be part of a nice drama-free lifestyle, certain accommodations have to be made--accommodations like purchasing tupperwares with screw-on lids for transporting juicy or potentially juicy food items. Accommodations like maybe not taking delicate tomatoes for lunch if you're likely going to have to run to the bus stop. Stuff like that. Common sense stuff that smart people wouldn't need to learn the hard way or read on a blog.

*Hangs head in shame.*

I sorta wish I hadn't cleaned the tomato juice off. It looked kind of cool--like blood gushing forth from the Bible, with a crescendo on the Revelation end. Tomatopocalypse!!

Clear the Air!

Yes, I've been continuing my bus riding all this time, but no, not with the frequency I'd hoped to. Y'see, my lifelong ability to sleep well at night has completely failed me in the last few months, leading to chronic exhaustion, and after the novelty of bus riding wore off, I was left with mornings like this:

Me, lying in bed: "Oooooh. I know I should get up to catch the bus, but I spent the last two hours tossing and turning--surely if I lie here for another 10 minutes I'll finally manage to get back to sleep and I can get in another 40 minutes of sleep before work. Surely it's worth a try, even though it means I'll have to drive to work? Sleep is soooo important!"

Me, lying in bed 50 minutes later: "Nope. No sleep and no bus. I'm so lame. Now I'm going to die of sleep deprivation AND Mother Nature hates me."

So I have two new resolutions:

1) get to bed by 10:30 each night, so that even if I still can't actually sleep more than five or six hours I can spend enough time in bed to get a decent amount of rest and be a cheerful and functional non-zombie

2) get my bus riding back on track by using the annual Utah Clear the Air challenge to harness my pride--because now if I don't ride the bus (or otherwise avoid using my car), all my Facebook friends will know I'm a huge hypocrite worthy of ridicule and maybe even a pie in the face.

So I've registered again this year for Clear the Air--y'all should join me! This year they even have a great smart phone tracking device you can use to ease the process of logging your trips. The program is a great way to help motivate us to not just decrease ozone pollution in the hot summer months, but get in the habit of thinking differently about transportation and improve our long term gettin'-around skills.....including making friends with UTA. It's fun to see the cumulative effects of all our small efforts, and dream of a future of cancer-free breathing and clear blue winter skies.

I'll see you on the bus.....or the sidewalk.....or the bike lane.....or the carpool lane.....or a solar-powered horse.....

Register Here! So Mother Nature won't stop washing your metaphorical underwear!

Old MacDonald rode the bus....

I couldn't tell whether he was sleeping or looking at his smartphone, but I hope he doesn't have a long walk from his farm to the nearest bus stop. Maybe that's why he's so tired. Too bad UTA doesn't provide a horse rack on the front of the bus for horse commuters like the bike rack they have for bike commuters.

Ms. Bullock drives the bus.

We'll call this rare AM posting penance for not following my own advice. UTA buses don't just run late (you can forgive a little lateness when riding the bus, given all the stops they have to accommodate)--they also frequently run a bit early. My rule for myself has been that the only way to be safe is to get to the stop at least two minutes early. Today I was only one minute early and missed the bus, and now instead of reading my hilarious G.K. Chesterton book, I have to get in my old stinky car and navigate through traffic. Bah.

But the blame is not all mine: I could see the path of the bus well before I got there, and it must have left that stop at least four minutes early, because otherwise I would have seen it pass by. Too early, UTA. Tell them to slow down, please.

Lots of whining, plus a Tarzan metaphor. Also, no photos. Sorry.

So, yeah, on Friday I managed to get myself to work on the bus and then from work to the wedding reception, and then kind friends drove me home from the reception, with a detour to Zuppas for post-reception soup and tomfoolery. If you knew just how much I long for simplicity and isolation on Fridays after work, this feat would be impressive to you, for I not only engaged in multiple social events that night, I took the bus! Where's my trophy?

The UTA bit was great, no complaints. But from the last UTA stop I had planned to use the University of Utah shuttle system to get within easy walking distance of the reception, which was at the U's Red Butte Gardens Orangerie. The U has a fancy website for its shuttles that shows you the names of all the routes, when/where they stop, what hours they run, and even shows you in real time where each shuttle is on its route. So I wrote down my option (the Gold line), got off at the right stop, and waited.

I don't have a smart phone, so I was relying on what the website had told me about shuttle arrival times. The Blue line shuttle showed up, but I let it go by because I knew the Gold line was coming and it would get me close to my destination. But ten minutes after the Gold line shuttle was supposed to arrive it still hadn't come. So I followed the instructions on the shuttle sign at the stop and texted their system for info on the next shuttle arriving at that stop. Twice it told me there were no shuttles enroute--not for any of the various lines. I took that to mean that I'd misread the shuttle schedule and that there would be no help for me from the shuttle service, so I hiked up my maxi dress and started my hike up the hill, only to have a Gold line shuttle pass me two minutes later. Grrrr. Big FAIL on your fancy shuttle tracking technology, U of U. The walk wasn't bad, and it was pretty good exercise, which one needs after a day sitting at a desk, but I was miffed because I'd wanted to learn about the U's shuttle system, but was failed by flashy but useless technology. I'd wanted to prove that, like Tarzan, I could transfer effortlessly from figurative vine to figurative vine in my journey through the figurative tree tops and prove myself the figurative monarch of my urban jungle, but instead found myself figuratively bushwhacking down on the figurative jungle floor being figuratively bitten by figurative tropical fire ants. And as much as I love hiking, I didn't enjoy showing up for the fancy reception with a bit more glow than I'd wanted (that's where the fire ants come in). But after retreating into the Red Butte bathrooms to change into the nice dress and shoes I'd been hauling around in my backpack and to engage in some basic primping, I looked pretty good and felt good as well. I stashed my backpack behind a large potted plant and after some chatting with friends and congratulating the couple and drinking an Italian soda and eating a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich I retreated alone into the beautiful gardens and came back just in time to beg the last of my departing friends to drop me off close to my house. This led to an invitation to join them at dinner, which means, you will note, that my decision to take the bus to the reception rather than drive to the reception resulted in one of my rare voluntary Friday night social excursions. I was socially exhausted by the end of the night, but had some fun memories to show for it, as well as the knowledge that God was pleased with my valiant stab at fake extroversion--which thing would not have happened but for the humility that carlessness (and shuttle carelessness) sometimes forces upon one. Which humility is good to experience, now and then, especially for those of us who have the option of driving everywhere.

As for the rest of the Memorial Day weekend, I'd invited my niece up for a sleepover Sunday night and a play day on Monday, and had planned to take her back to Sandy on TRAX when the fun was over. But I had forgotten: UTA doesn't think that people need public transit on holidays. That's because the people running UTA are like me: they own cars and when they ride public transit, it's to feel warm and fuzzy and socially responsible and maybe get some work done during their commute. But there are people who rely on public transit for their lives to function. They can't afford to buy a car, or can't afford to both drive their cars regularly and feed their families. And guess what, UTA? These tend to be the people who are forced to work on holidays, while the rest of us play. They're the ones running the retail shops where you get your Memorial Day bargains and the gas stations where you fill up your Bimmer. And they need the buses to run so they can get to their jobs and sell you cheap junk you no longer have space for. So do yourselves a favor, and let them get to their jobs on the holidays. It was no big deal to me and my niece, because I have a car and the option to drive it without breaking the bank. But it's a big deal to others. Also, we can't complain that people keep driving and polluting our valley air if our public transit system is not comprehensive enough to make relying on it for daily transportation a reasonable prospect. Once a person has spent the considerable amount of money to buy and service and insure a car (because he knows the buses don't run on holidays and mostly don't run on Sundays and only sorta run on Saturdays), you can't be surprised when he chooses to drive it more and more often--because it's way more convenient than a bad bus system, and the cost of car ownership usually doesn't make sense if you're only going to use your car when the buses aren't running. And of course once you've decided you need a car to fill in the public transit gaps, you note that the bus fares for most trips are more expensive than gas for the car, so where exactly is the incentive to transition to bus riding? If people could get where they needed on the buses every day of the year, then they could dispense with the cost of buying and insuring and maintaining a car and at THAT point being a regular bus rider would make sense financially, even with the current high fares.

Rant over.

Post over.

Another confessional post. Read at your own risk of fatal boredom.

It turns out that the extra hours spent on the bus each week, while they are usually productive hours, make me less inclined to spend more time when I get home sitting in front of a computer and writing blog posts. So hallelujah! If this blog is going to happen at all regularly, it's going to get less verbose. Which is good for everyone (anyone?) involved.

So....in confessions, that last post on May 6 was the only time I rode the bus that week. My excuse was that I had to buy a bunch of plants for myself and others that Saturday at a special one-day parking lot sale with no shopping carts. On Thursday my coworker offered me the use of her kids' old wagon for plant hauling, and I really needed the wagon. As I was unwilling to speed walk 13 minutes to the bus stop after work on Friday while pulling a big orange wagon behind me, I realized I'd have to jettison my bus plans and drive. If I'd been more on top of things earlier in the week and gotten my bus riding in, I would have been able to reach my goal while having wiggle room for later crises such as wagon hauling.  Life lessons. Life lessons.

To my credit, I did ride THREE WHOLE TIMES the following week (twice to work and also to Sandy on Saturday), even though I had a bunch of purchased vegetable seedlings in my care that needed sunlight during the day until they could be passed off to those who requested them or planted by me. My apartment cannot provide sufficient light and so in past years I've driven the plants to work with me and put them in a sunny spot in my workplace garden during work hours, and then driven them back home to spend the night in my car. I had to get creative on the two days I took the bus to work, leaving the plants in my car at night so they didn't get spoiled by the warm indoor night temperatures, and then transferring them to the sunniest spot in my house while I was at work (because they would cook if I left them in my car for sunlight while I took the bus to work). I don't think they suffered too much from this on and off indoor treatment, and it was nice to feel that my efforts to garden were accompanied by some efforts to not cancel out the ecological benefits of said garden by adding unnecessary pollution to the air.

I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Goodwill intended their building to be used for more noble purposes than providing handy bathroom sinks for rinsing the yogurt-drenched possessions of public transit riders, but I trust they would be gratified by my gratitude all the same.

Also notable that week: the Great Yogurt Explosion of 2014. Let's just say that Australian-style yogurt is just as non-portable as it appears, even if you rubber-band the lid to the tupperware. Learn from my folly, dear reader, and choose a thicker yogurt for your bus adventures. Thankfully, for my cleanup job I was once again able to make use of the convenient and clean bathroom in the delightfully named Wilford W. and Dorothy P. Goodwill Humanitarian Building that is right by my transfer stop. Quick in--rinse off apples and avocado and paperwork and bag--and quick out, in time to catch the connecting bus. The Goodwills--they had to be philanthropists, right? They had no choice. Can't very well be a greedy oil magnate with that name.

And riding the TRAX out to Sandy on Saturday with a box of plants for my parents was fun. I sat across from two little kids who wanted to know all about the plants I was planting and check them out. Oooo! Pleasant conversations with strangers on public transit! I'm not such a freaky, freaky recluse after all.

Sad observation from today's trip to work: one of the houses on my pretty walk had burned down last night. On the walk in to work the news trucks were there, filming the firefighters preparing to demolish the charred shell of the house. On my walk back to the bus stop after work, the house had been demolished, with this Pooh Bear doll perched on the rubble. So sad. Such a cute house with beautiful flowering vines all along the fence. According to the neighbors, no one was hurt, so that's good.

This week I'm atoning for one of my short weeks by riding to work three days (oooo!) Or at least that is my hope. Two down, and hopefully tomorrow as well. The trick with tomorrow is I have to go straight from work to a fancy wedding reception up at the Univeristy of Utah's Red Butte Gardens, which is a fair walking distance from the last UTA stop. Will I really do this, or am I too lazy? Will I take fancy reception clothes, change into them, and leave my other clothes at work so I don't have to walk into the reception with a big bag full of clothes like a transient? Do the walking thing from the last bus stop to Red Butte (and carry the dress shoes in my purse), or try to figure out the late-night University shuttle system to get a ride closer to Red Butte to eliminate some of the walking?  If I do it, I'll reward myself by bumming a ride home from the reception with one of my friends. I only have so much stomach for Friday night after-work adventures.

And....I've got to get to bed if those adventures stand any chance of happening. Can't think of anything clever or pithy to end with, so peace out.

Excuses, excuses.

Oh, the rigors of keeping up a blog. Especially a blog with a Central Theme. Did I really start an entire blog about riding the bus?

Apparently I did.

I have to keep reminding myself that the primary goal here is to force myself to reflect on and change both my habits and my attitudes, and not necessarily to be entertaining. So here goes the excuses for my poor bus riding and bus blog posting the past several days:

First excuse: Two friends left town in the same week and both asked me to check on their stuff while they were away, which I was very happy to do (friend #1: cats and house; friend #2: mail and house). They live on opposite sides of Salt Lake and so doing these checks on the bus would have taken hours and hours, if I even managed to get it all done before the buses stopped running. I'm only so ambitious.

Second excuse: Another friend's wedding happened in Sandy on Tuesday, one of my regular bus days, and getting to the wedding on the bus after work would have taken almost two hours, even starting the journey from my work in Millcreek (seriously, UTA? two hours?) So I drove on Tuesday so I could get to the wedding in a reasonable amount of time, then drove my car on Wednesday so I could do house-checking rounds, and then rode the bus to work on Thursday, and again drove on Friday so I could do more house-checking. So only one bus day last week. On the bright side, I planned well and integrated all the errands I needed to do in areas near their houses so that I wouldn't need to do as much driving on Saturday.

Third excuse: I spent Saturday trying to hack a vegetable garden plot out of an inhospitable desert wilderness. And then all other tasks got moved around and blogging got knocked out until today.

So it was an unusual week, but it shouldn't be hard to make up for it this week or next.

On to bus riding observations:

I've resumed helping a friend with his book, so I now have an Official Important Project to work on while riding to and from work. To be all productive, y'know. As I've said, the bus route I take is really pretty, so focusing on this Official Important Project is often hard, but I'm getting better (it would be impossible to concentrate at all if the book weren't so inherently interesting--the topic is the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon--it's going to be a stunner, and when it's published I'm sending you a copy for Christmas). The bus is great for such tasks because when one would ordinarily get frustrated solving a problem related to one's Official Important Project and wander off to the kitchen to stress-eat or wander outside to exercise in the name of avoidance, one finds oneself trapped on a bus with no eating or exercising options, so one soldiers on. And one inevitably feels better about oneself for sticking with one's task than one would feel after avoiding it. Hurray for enforced discipline.

Do you know what this thing is?

On Thursday, while making notes on a book chapter draft and occasionally looking up to stare at the bus goings on, I finally figured out what this odd structure is. It is in one of the buses I ride regularly, and I'd puzzled the last weeks over its intended function. I thought it might be some sort of luggage holder, but a Google image search for "UTA luggage cage thing" had failed to call up any sort of enlightening information. My recent epiphany: it's a ski corral (a Google image search for "UTA ski bus" confirmed this). The route I ride isn't a ski resort route, but I guess the ski buses get used for non-ski routes during the off season. So now you know what this thing is if you encounter it. I think it would be a handy spot to choose if there were only standing room left on the bus. You wouldn't have to hold on to anything to stay upright--you could just lock yourself into your own personal bus corral and it would keep other humans from invading your space or picking your pockets.

Today as I walked that last stretch to work I passed a neat and well loved little yard where an older man was drinking what looked like tea. He was wearing a dress shirt and vest, sitting in his garden at a fancy white filigreed patio table set under a tree, next to a Roman numeraled garden clock on a pole. Near him was a fancy monogrammed "T" pendant stuck in the ground, presumably his last initial. The whole scene reminded me of my time in England, where people took their tea and their family names and their gardens very seriously--where the garden was another room of the house, meticulously tidy and carefully thought out. It made me happy. Yet another little scene I never would have seen if speeding by in a car. And one day I will be a yard owner and plan out every detail and then sit under a tree and drink in all those beautiful details with satisfaction and smile at passersby envying my garden and its many charming details. One day.....

In other news, I am now the owner of a pretty nice camera (thanks, KSL classifieds!), and I even took pictures to add to this posting in the hope of making it a bit less dull, but somehow managed to lose said pictures in the process of downloading them to my computer. Darned tricksy technological details, sucking my bus photos into the void. Next time. Next time.

While you're waiting (for the bus).

Yes, I have more to say. But it was a busy week and today will be the busiest of all and I may not get to blogging until tomorrow, so to make it look like I have my act together.....here's Bill Irwin and friends waiting for a NYC bus. Proof that waiting--for whatever--does not have to be a drudgery.



Incidentally, one of the delightfulest moments of my life was getting to chat briefly with Bill Irwin in NYC (thanks, Leah!) I've been one of his groupies since I was a kid, and I totally believe he does this stuff at bus stops.

Hive Pass availability.

I emailed the Hive Pass people today to ask how long the passes will be for sale (it's a pilot program, and so not guaranteed to continue indefinitely).

Answer: until August 31, 2014

If you think you want one, don't delay too long!

Bad bus poetry (volume 1).

Composed on the bus ride to and from work today.

Beached behemoth
Rolls upstream
Fat on a breakfast of sleepy seers
Who now see all
The dog walkers
The cell phone talkers
The late o'clockers--you
Lumbering leviathan
Threading through
Scattered schools of frenzied fish
Whizzy dizzy bitty fish
You could have them for lunch
Baleen-straining beautiful bipedopods
And spitting out the shells
But you are not that sort, you
Gentle giant
Bider of time
Wender, winder
Steady (sea) tortoise in the harried hares
Spit me out at Nineveh, you
Wheeled whale
I will say what I saw.



(Perhaps its title should be "A-littered with Alliteration.")

The regulars.

Today's lesson: checking the weather report before leaving the house on bus-to-work day is extra important. This means if it's going to be a blustery day, you do NOT wear a wrap dress, especially if you do not also wear a slip.

Live and learn.

But it was exciting to be out in the wind and the cool temperatures made for a pleasant walk both ways. A young father and his toddler daughter rode with me in the morning, and they talked to a woman who had brought an empty stroller onboard. He told her that he was a computer science student. She explained to him and his confused little girl that she had left her own baby at school so she could go home and finish her master's thesis, entitled "Parents' Perspective on an Autism Diagnosis." (Yes, lady. I was totally eavesdropping and taking notes--'cause y'know--I have a bus blog, and you're my material.) After the pleasantries she retreated into her smartphone and the father and daughter launched in to a rollicking rendition of "The Wheels on the Bus" with their own special verse: "The dinosaur on the bus says 'It's too tight! It's too tight! It's too tight!'" It was cute enough to rot your teeth.

Walk to work: lovely, quick, and got there two minutes early. When I walked in, the mail clerk lovingly pulled a seed pod out of my hair. A gift from the beautiful big trees lining my walking route.

After long hours sitting at a desk and breathing office air the walk back to the bus is a joy, even in strong winds. Well, it was a joy as soon as I got past the busy street and onto the sleepy lane so that my wrap dress flashing my underwear was less likely to catch attention.

The father was on the return bus, too, this time without his daughter, and intently reading for his classes. He failed to pull the stop request line, but the driver apparently knew where he usually stopped and so it was only when the bus slowed down for the stop that the man looked up and gathered his things and hopped off, calling "thanks, Ralph!" to the driver. (I like the driver, too, and am glad to know his name. A jolly and helpful one.) I hope that cast of characters will make regular appearances on my Tuesday rides. I'm fond of them already.

Heck, maybe someday I'll even strike up a conversation.

A beautiful ride.

I fell off the wagon. I blame it on Tax Season and gardening season and that evil Heartbleed bug that had me in a panic last week. I had to get time-sensitive stuff done a couple of evenings, stayed up too late, and didn't want to get up underslept to ride the bus, so I drove instead, and therefore today was only my second day riding the bus to work. The prior time I was taking a route I don't expect to take often, because that day I needed to drop off my sick car first. Today I took my preferred regular route, which starts just a half block from my apartment and winds me through some of the prettiest suburbs in the valley--the Avenues and the Harvard/Yale area and the classier part of Sugarhouse. It really was a joy to not just take a pretty, roundabout route to work, but to have the luxury of really looking at things, which is dangerous to do when you're driving a car. From my high perch, like an Indian princess on her elephant, I surveyed the well-tended yards filled with spring flowers, the buds on the big trees lining the streets. I had brought a book to read, but I quickly put it down and just watched the beautiful world go by.

The first bus picked up a quiet lot of people: many students listening to iPods, a lady in leopard skin print reading a book, and most of these, like me, exited at the University of Utah. I thought I was being clever getting off a stop earlier than I'd been told to, not realizing that the connecting stop that normally would have been across the street had been removed for the construction of the new law building. So I ended up getting a good three-block sprint in as I tried to find the next stop down. It wasn't ideal, but it's just part of learning the route and it meant I got to work with a lot of energy. 

The second bus on this route leaves the university and heads south, dropping me four blocks from my work, about a 13 minute walk through a neighborhood of little houses with nicely kept yards. No sidewalks, but it's not a problem because the street is wide and not at all busy. I do have to cross a busy street at the end, but the city has recently added crosswalks and a signal to stop traffic (and even Rocky Anderson's orange crossing flags), so it works really well. The only problem I can see is that both coming and going that walk will have to be a fast one: even if the bus drops me off on time I have to walk briskly to get to work on time, and I have to leave work exactly at the buzzer if I don't want to miss my return bus. Maybe I can work something out with my boss to have a five-minute grace period at the beginning of work if my bus happens to drop me off a few minutes late. Or I can just plan on sprinting on occasion if necessary. This route to work is shorter and so much more pleasant and beautiful and involves a lot less walking than the alternate routes--I want to make it work.

The return trip was just as nice--no reading, just breathing deep breaths and thinking deep thoughts while my chauffeur took me on a leisurely tour of handsome old neighborhoods. The return transfer was also super easy (this time I followed the directions!) and a few minutes later I was dropped just a half block from my front door in the lovely warm evening. I loved this day. Let the experiment continue as planned.

Logistical considerations:

--Today I just wore my walking shoes to work and didn't bring anything nicer to change into. We're supposed to dress fairly nicely at my work (no jeans and the men are in ties), but I hope that if the rest of my outfit is nice my walking shoes won't be frowned upon. I'll probably explain what I'm doing to my supervisor--I think he'll be fine with it if I explain to him that I'm trying to avoid poisoning his children and killing polar bears. How can he say no?  :)

Observations: 

--With all my whizzing by in a car I'd failed to notice that right by my work there is now not only a dog washing business, but also a dog gym/spa business. I find this simultaneously hilarious and irritating. Pet worshipers: my pet peeve.

--Lots of younger, single men reading books on these bus routes. I'll be married in no time, if I can just get them to put down their books!

I've got to get a decent camera. This blog looks boring. Too many words, not enough pictures. I wouldn't want to read it--why are you?

So far, so good.

Whadayaknow? The first day I'd planned to take the bus to work, and I had to take the car in for repair. It's as if the universe is trying to remind me what a pain and expense car ownership is and that I'd be much happier if I could transition all the way out of it. (I'm $300 poorer. Ugh. Thanks, stupid car.) So I drove to the car repair shop, dropped off the car, and then took the bus to work. It all went seamlessly and I got to work a few minutes early, fairly glowing with energy from that final 15 minute walk from the bus. This won't be as fun in the winter, of course, but today it was wonderful and I honestly felt like I could be happy riding the bus to work every day, even though it means getting up 50 minutes earlier.

Logistical considerations:

--took breakfast with me to eat at work so I wouldn't have to eat an hour earlier than usual

--took an apple to eat on the way home so that I wouldn't be ravenous and eat half the fridge when I arrived
--took lunch with me (I almost always do this, but it will be especially important on days that I take the bus to work because there is no place in easy walking/busing distance of my work where I can get a healthy and inexpensive lunch)

--wore good walking shoes and took work shoes with me to change into at work

--brought a book to read

Observations:

--I never noticed there's a pinball machine dealer on State Street and a dental spa (??!?) on 2100 South (things you don't notice when speeding by in a car)

--UTA buses are frequently a bit late and sometimes even a bit early (though they're supposed to slow down if they start running early), so it's wise to be a bit early--who knows? If you're early enough you might get lucky and catch the prior bus that's running super late, and get where you're going early as happened today--booyah!

I'd never used the tap-on fare card reader thingy, though I'd seen them at TRAX stations. If you have a card that's good for transit (such as a monthly transit card or HivePass) or want to pay your fare with a contactless credit or debit card, you'll use this reader as you board the bus. Here's what it looks like--a bit different than the TRAX fare card readers, but they work the same.

It's next to the bus's cash receptacle thingy. You tap your card on the base of the reader where the hand icon is pictured and if your card is accepted there will be a green checkmark flashed on the screen. If your card is rejected (expired or no more funds), it will flash red and you will have to pay some other way. You're supposed to also tap off when you exit the bus (you can do this at either bus door), but I always forget to do it. It doesn't make a difference to me since my Hive Pass is unlimited use, but those whose cards are charged based on the number of bus trips need to remember to also tap off. If you fail to do so, UTA thinks you remained on the bus, which depending on your location and the payment system you're using, could mean extra charges, though I don't think that would ever mean more than one extra adult single-trip fare. (That is, I doubt that if you failed to tap off, the system would assume you rode the bus back and forth all day long and charge you for 10 or 15 or 20 round trips--probably just one round trip.) The other function of tapping off is to give UTA an idea of what portions of what bus routes are the most traveled, enabling them to adjust routes to be more useful to riders. A worthy reason for me to get into the habit of tapping off even though I don't have to.

Eventually UTA may begin charging bus riders by distance traveled, instead of a flat fee no matter the distance as they do now. This tap-on, tap-off technology is designed to make distance-based fares easy to implement, and this is already the payment system on the Frontrunner commuter trains. If you forget to tap off when exiting the Frontrunner, you get charged for a longer ride because the system thinks you remained on the train.

Again, if you're a Salt Lake City resident, getting the crazy-cheap Hive Pass makes all this irrelevant. One flat rate for unlimited rides for a year, and no need to remember to tap off. Just don't lose that precious plastic sucker, or you will be a very, very sad little wingless bee.

Confessions and aspirations, for the record.

My nephew, ever eager for an excuse to ride the TRAX. So what's wrong with me?

So the world's getting one more blog. Poor world. But this one I hope will be a bit more useful than some. I hope it will help motivate me to change for the better, and perhaps help few others to change as well.

Flashback: I began my adulthood in 1994 and that same year discovered the remarkable public transit system of Olde England. My traveling companion and I were able to get to any little village and any corner of any city we wanted to visit using buses and trains and reasonable walks. We were not alone: the English were enthusiastic public transit riders, which frequent use and abundant fare collection made possible the robust mass transit schedules and vast web of routes. It was a beautiful thing, those six weeks of bus utopia. I returned to the States with no desire to own a car. But....

This only worked until I graduated from college. I wanted to continue live in the "city" (Provo, Utah--ha!), but my new job was in the 'burbs of sleepy Orem, Utah. There was no way I was getting there and back every day on the very limited bus routes. So I bought my first car. I totaled my first car. Fifteen years and two cars later, I am still driving to work. *Hangs head in shame.* I still live in the city (now Salt Lake City) in the downest part of downtown, and I love the accessibility: being able to get easily on foot most everywhere I need to go, with the occasional help of a Free Fare Zone downtown bus or train. Most everywhere except work....because my current job is also in the 'burbs....of sleepy East Millcreek, Utah.

For ten years I have driven to this job. It's 7.5 miles from my apartment, about 15 minutes, so not a long commute compared to many, and I almost never end up in traffic because it's a reverse commute. But it bothers me that I've spent so many years' worth of 15 minutes polluting the air, wearing and tearing my car, and accomplishing nothing besides not crashing. And yet I continue to drive every day, because the quickest public transit option takes about an hour--almost four times as long. (Because we're not in England anymore.) And at $5 per round trip or $84 per month, it costs far less to drive than to take the bus, even with our current high gas prices.

But the last couple of winters the populated areas of Utah have been terribly smoggy. We have a frequent nasty weather phenomenon called an inversion that is caused when cold air is trapped under warm air, and both are hemmed in by our tall mountains. The air pollution builds in the cold air layer, trapped next to the ground, creating terrible thick soups of smoggy nastiness. These end only when a strong wind or storm blows in and clears the air, so for many winter days we have had the worst air in the country--something resembling Beijing. I rarely get headaches, but I had many this winter. I don't have respiratory problems (yet), but those I know who do were miserable. And it's depressing, not seeing the mountains or the sky for days or weeks on end.

It's ridiculous, particularly for a part of the country that prides itself on its beautiful scenery and outdoor appeal, to have air so bad that people are advised to stay indoors for weeks at a time. Businesses have started reconsidering whether they should jump on the bandwagon and move to beautiful and business-friendly Utah--can they convince their employees to relocate to a place that could easily give their children asthma and that will increase their cancer risk? There has been a public outcry this last winter. I participated in a big clean air rally, and we demanded that the legislature take swift and meaningful action to do all it can to clean up our air. Industrial pollution is one area that government has a lot of control over and needs to look at much more closely. But residential and vehicle pollution are big. And while there's much that government can do to incentivize improved fuel use habits of private citizens, ultimately we each have to decide to change our ways. Change is hard. Utah is part of the West, and the West cherishes big yards, big houses, big open spaces, and the big cars that such big lives were designed around.

Salt Lake City's mayor, Ralph Becker, recently launched a pilot program, the Hive Pass, which drastically reduces the cost of a monthly unlimited all-access transit pass from $84 per month to just $30 per month, for one year. This is a citywide experiment to see if people will actually buy and use them and if it will make a marked difference in the pollution levels in the Salt Lake Valley. I had been clamoring for reduced transit fares in my circle of influence (because the fares were high enough that there was little financial incentive to ride public transit unless you were traveling long distances). My feeling was that individuals were never going to lean away from a car-centric culture toward a public transit culture if there wasn't at least one way in which public transit benefited them personally. (Yes, we all benefit from decreased pollution, but that's so vague and each person's efforts to that end are all but impossible to detect.) So now that Mayor Becker has provided what I wished for in the form of these dirt-cheap transit passes, it is time to show that I am on board. I bought my Hive Pass two weeks ago: $350 for a full year. To break even, I need to make at least six round trips outside the Free Fare Zone each month.

So I want to prove to myself that I'm willing to make some consistent sacrifices of convenience to both decrease my car use and increase my familiarity with the UTA transit routes. And I don't want to substitute my normal frequent walking errands with mass transit (yes, this pass could actually make me lazier!) Rather, I want to be sure that I'm improving the health of both the air and myself with this pass, so I've got to use it to cut out some of my regular car trips. That means using it to make trips to/from work or church or my Sunday evening trip to visit my parents, as those are the places I still drive. There is no way I can get to church on time by public transit because the limited Sunday routes don't run early enough, and even if there were, there are physically challenged others in my congregation who rely on me to drive them to church frequently. And while UTA can easily get me to Sandy on Sundays, traveling the last stretch to my parents' house would require a 40 minute walk or being picked up from the station (and later returned to the station) by my family, because while the TRAX train runs on Sunday, the connecting bus does not. Not ideal. I am willing to be somewhat inconvenienced, but I don't want to inconvenience others if I can help it.

So the work commute will be the big one. My goal is to take public transit to work at least six times a month, and ideally eight times a month. I will have to leave my apartment 50 minutes earlier than usual and will get home 50 minutes later than usual. I'll focus on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because demanding a big new sacrifice of myself on a Monday morning is a recipe for failure, arriving home much later on a Friday evening is a recipe for a damaged social life, and I have a commitment after work on Wednesdays that would make that day somewhat hard.  I will need to reconsider a lot of little things to make this my new habit: Do I wear good walking shoes and carry appropriate work shoes to change into? Or do I just have one pair of work shoes that I wear every day and leave them at work so I don't have to carry them back and forth? Or do I invest in new shoes that could work as both walking and work shoes? I don't want to eat breakfast an hour earlier than usual, so do I carry breakfast with me and eat it between bus transfers (no eating on the buses!) or do I store breakfast food at work and eat once I arrive? Do I pack an after-work snack to keep me from gnawing my own arm off during the longer trip home? What foods can I keep in the work freezer for backup in case I forget to bring my lunch one day (the food purchasing options within walking distance of my work are scarce, so being without a car when I forget to bring a lunch becomes a problem). And there will be other questions to answer through research and trial and error. I'm sure all such puzzles will have elegant solutions, and I think I will enjoy coming up with those solutions and feeling like I'm making even a small difference as I try to make this work commute a natural part of my life. I expect that I will also feel much better physically arriving at work having walked about 15 minutes total to and from buses, and arriving back home having walked about 15 minutes again. Time on the bus can be used for reading or writing, and the walking part of the journey can count as part of my daily exercise.

I will also explore the rest of the transit system--places I don't ordinarily need to go--just because I can now get there and back for no extra cost with my Hive Pass. I'll do this just to become familiar with the various routes, to learn how best to transfer between routes, and I'll investigate what is easily accessible on the Frontrunner commuter train, as well. The hope here will be to give myself and any readers an idea of what is reasonably accessible on the current routes and what interesting new places might be discovered by trying new routes. So this portion of my blog will be more about exploration and adventure and trial and error: for example, with a little advance planning and by leaving a little early, can I get to the restaurant on time to have dinner with friends? Will buses still be running the other direction when dinner is over? UTA's routes are admittedly limited at present. Only as we get a sense of what key places can be reached on current routes and at what times of what days will people start increasing their mass transit use, and only as the system registers increased regular use will UTA be likely to expand service and make regular mass transit use more reasonable for more people.

This blog will probably seem silly to any readers who don't have easy car access and so have had to get everywhere they go on the local buses. But my goal with this blog is to overcome my own attitude about Utah mass transit and my own knowledge hurdles and to communicate with people like me: people who can afford to have a car and drive it a lot, but want to move away from that habit--people who despite good intentions know too little about the finer points of the UTA system and have been reluctant to devote the effort necessary to figure it out and then commit to regularly make the extra effort to choose public transit over car travel. I hope that frequent and regular public transit use becomes my new habit, a way of easing out of the belief that I am always free to plan my life poorly and race from place to place by car in the name of efficiency (but honestly, more often laziness and lack of planning). I'm currently single and childless. If I'm going to change my transportation habits in a meaningful and permanent way, this is a perfect time to do so, while I have few people dependent on me to be at specific places at specific times. A more complicated future life will be easier to mesh with public transit use if I'm already well versed in the system and if the rhythms of my life have been adjusted to accommodate a slightly less frenetic pace. One day I may move to the 'burbs for the sake of scampering children, and have less walking access to what I need, so learning the bus system very well now may serve me even better in some future life as I try to keep my car use minimal.

I don't flatter myself that these minor changes of my habits will make a huge impact on the local air. But I'm hopeful they'll make a huge impact on my attitude and lifestyle and that as I learn to adapt cheerfully and creatively to that new lifestyle, others around me who have been been uncertain about how to make similar changes in their own habits will have a better idea of what to expect and how to do so without unreasonable sacrifices. As more of us pass around encouragement and useful advice, more of us will use the system. And as more of us use the system, the routes will gradually be expanded, and with any luck the next generation in the Salt Lake Valley will have a beautiful and extensive transit system like the one beloved in England, rendering car ownership optional and dramatically improving our air quality.

So here begins my little personal journey--learning to watch the world out the side windows.