TheBus

I took TheBus this morning for the first time since ... high school, I think. I honestly don't remember catching TheBus during college. Either way, it's been more than a decade since I last rode on Hawaii public transit.

I don't know what brought on the urge to do it. Might be that I'm tired of Honolulu traffic. Might be that I want to save gas money. Might be that I want to do something small to help lessen my carbon footprint.

 Might be that I'm just tired of driving.

Anyway, it turns out that there is a bus stop right outside of my place and the route goes right into town, leaving me with a 5 minute walk to work.

Awesome.

And it turns out that the stop I got on at was the first stop. Which means a totally empty bus, except for the other commuters that got on with me.

Super awesome.

And by the time we hit the freeway, TheBus was not even half full.

Super duper awesome.

HOWEVER, even with all the space available, I think I must have been sitting in someone's "regular seat". Because at one stop, an elderly gentleman walked straight up to the empty seat next to me and plopped down, making an effort to keep about 6 inches of space between us, then proceeded to open his newspaper.

I already had my earbuds in and was listening to Doug Loves Movies at this point, so I leaned my head back and closed my eyes to enjoy the ride. As we got off the freeway and made our way into town, I pulled the "Request Stop" cord, then shuffled past the elderly man to get off at 6:44 am.

I got to work on time, had a chance to really enjoy a podcast episode and rest my eyes.

Strangely enough, the ride home was on a smaller and nearly full bus. Which was also running about 10 minutes late. And I couldn't get Google Now to show me this information, but was able to see this information using Google Maps. However, once I got on and found an open seat, I was able to avoid the stress of pau hana traffic and not worry about falling asleep at the wheel and enjoy the ride and I got home at around 5:15 pm.

All in all, a very nice day of public transit.

My one problem is that I'm really not ready to head out the door to catch TheBus at 6:05 am regularly. At least not yet. Also, my wife is a SAHM, but she doesn't drive. So in case of emergency, having access to the car is necessary. Also, also, I've paid ($85) for parking for the upcoming month at work. Maybe at some point in the future, I'll be able to make this my daily ride to work, but tomorrow it's back to the drive.

Do you use public transit regularly?