2.29.2012

Gazelle Intensity: The Bus Blues

Tonight I realized that my sister, Chelsea, and one of my best friends, Erica, are rockstars. First off, my sister moved to Chicago when she was nineteen and mastered public transportation and impressed me with her fearlessness on the EL. I was always pretty scared when I would go visit her because everything having to do with public transportation is just foreign to me. Then, there is my friend, Erica. She has never ever owned a car, which is impressive in itself since she is a college graduate and has gone this long without car payments, car insurance, and gas prices. She, too, has recently mastered public transportation and frequently takes the bus to work.

So, the time has come for me to hop on the bandwagon and hop on the bus. Ha ha. It all started with Mr. Team Blue's Jeep (which we lovingly call Bulldog) breaking down, leaving us with Carla (my beloved Saturn). At first, we managed okay since I had only one job and was able to drop Aaron off at work and pick him back up. No biggie, right?

Well, now I have three--yes, three--jobs and gas went up to $3.85 this week. Going along with our Gazelle Intensity, it has become so expensive to drop Aaron off thirty minutes away and drive back times two. Bleh. So, tonight I took the bus. I would really like to sound noble and cool and say that I did it of my own free will, out of sacrifice for our debt free dreams, but that would be a lie. I really didn't want to. I have been prolonging my bus riding for a couple of months now. Months.  Knowing the whole time that we could be saving tons of money if I would just take the bus. Today just so happened to be the first day that we couldn't possibly get both me and Aaron to work with one car.

It wasn't so bad, really. These two men got on the bus and one of them said, "Hey, there, pretty lady," sans friendly cowboy accent. Another creepy old man sat in front of me and pulled out his phone and started typing "Butthole itching" into a text message (yeah, I definitely learned my lesson on that one. Don't look at other peoples texts, it's not worth it...). And this other guy talked to the bus driver the entire time, telling stories of his lady-friends, his daughter, all the while loudly proclaiming his age every fifth sentence (which, by the way, is either 41, 52, or 97...not sure which).

All this saying, it was an adventure. And when we passed by all the gas stations screaming that gas went up 40 cents, it felt more worth it. If you are on the edge of embracing public transportation, it's not so bad. Just keep chanting in your head "Debt free. Debt free. Debt free." And don't forget to take pepper spray :)

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