I remain firm in my plan to Mass Transit two or three times a week. I'm going to shut up about it. Very soon. But I'll still be riding. In fact, I'm already having trouble imagining putting myself through the hassle of driving every day.

Like today.

I was laughing, people.

I caught the bus to the rail station, then the bus to my office. 55 minutes, in spite of traffic backed up in every direction due to icy roads and continuing snowfall that the City of Denver inexplicably decided would not require sand trucks or snowplows. If you're not on the roads (light rail, I heart you), then you don't have to care about road conditions.

Mind you, I caught the bus at 7:35 and heard other passengers complaining because it was the 7:05 bus that was running late, but that didn't affect me.

(They were pissy at the driver, which astonished me. In what way is the driver responsible for, as she informed them, accidents blocking the roads and cars in front of her getting stuck on the ice? I get that they were pissed they'd been standing outside in the snow for half an hour longer than they'd expected or wanted, but acting like it's something the driver did deliberately is just ridiculous. It's interesting to see that people can get road rage even if they're not driving. There's probably something Deeply Psychological in there, about a human being's response to minor irritations when repeated frequently, but I'll leave that to the experts. Since my own walk to the bus stop takes four minutes, if I'm moving very slowly, I'm not one of those who will probably wind up standing at stops for a long time. At least, not very often.)

It took so long for the bus to reach the light rail station (traffic, people getting stuck on the roads, other people causing gridlock by refusing to leave intersections clear, etc.) that I had time to figure out that I can catch the 8:05 bus, in good weather, and still be on time to work! (That's thanks to the magic of Buses Only lanes on the surface roads.)

The more I experiment with this Mass Transit thing, the more convenient it gets, you know?

The train was SRO this morning, so I was strap-hanging, but the 0 bus, in contrast to yesterday's wall-to-wall load, had only four people on it. Not that it would have mattered to me. I'm already a Seasoned Pro at this and I'd scavenged a seat by the exit before I realized the bus was going to be mostly empty. (The bus will stop upon request, but it's not going to sit there forever and wait for you to disembark. You have to be ready.) This morning I'd even packed all of my bits and pieces into a zipper bag, so I wasn't juggling two or three carry-on items like I had to yesterday. Today I had the one bag and my handy-dandy umbrella. (It keeps the snow off my head and out of my eyes and, being bright red, insures that drivers will see me as I'm walking across roads.) So it's all convenience and easiness. I'm thrilled!

But.

I have to report that so far I am grievously disappointed in the quality of my fellow travelers. So far they're all average, normal commuters. I mean, I wasn't expecting winos and stoners, not at 8:00 a.m., but I thought there's be some colorful figure in the bunch.

Okay, this morning there was a woman eating a frozen pudding pop for breakfast, but that's not that odd. And there was potentially something odd in the guy who chose to use the pull-down seat in the handicapped space, crowding up against my shoulder, instead of one of the five or ten entirely empty rows on the bus, but I was Pondering Public Transportation and didn't really pay that much attention to him.

Tonight - a party downtown, then Mass Transit Magic back to my part of the world. (Car? Who needs a car?)

(Okay, the R.C. needs a car. I'm relying on her to get me home from the train station. Still. I feel so urban! Not as urban as I felt last night, waiting for my train in the snow, but....)