The Car-Free Challenge: Friday

So, when we started this on Sunday, we thought, ‘Oh good, because on Friday, we won’t have to go anywhere! That will help us get through the week.’ But then Friday rolled around, and we were having so much fun with our challenge that we decided to hop on the bus downtown and grab dinner and see a movie. We chose to see ‘Dark Knight’, which is, like, THREE HOURS long. Oy. That put a little crimp in our style because the latest show we could go to was the 5:30. Otherwise, the buses would have stopped running by the time we got out.

But it was ok, because we are hungry all the time now! So we ate at Subway (me with the ultimate veggie sandwich), and then headed off to the movie.

Notice that I don’t even mention the bus ride? That’s because it was so flippin’ easy to walk down the street, grab the bus, and head downtown. Seriously.

But because we hadn’t carefully checked the time, we were back at the bus stop to go home about half an hour before we needed to be. By the time the bus came, we had completely debriefed about the movie, figured out all the inconsistencies (never go to the movies with a physicist unless you LIKE this kind of analysis!), and gotten a little tired of standing there! Had we checked the time, however, we might have gone down the street to get a beer before taking the bus home, and that would have been really great... next time...

But really, here’s the thing. It was not a hardship to wait for the bus. We just conversed, enjoyed the cool(er) night air, and people-watched. Apparently, it’s now way cool for guys to put their shirt on only halfway---with one arm out of the sleeve... weird. Waiting for the bus was just... down time. Which we don’t get enough of, anyway. So maybe during the school year, this will seem like a pain? Or when the weather is bad? Dunno. Some people HAVE to take the bus everywhere. They seem to get by all right.

It’s kind of embarrassing, really. I mean, here we’ve been complaining this whole time about the noisy buses that go RIGHT BY OUR HOUSE. Dratted buses. Making so much noise. And it turns out that this is something to treasure, not complain about! Imagine. Somebody driving past your house every day, like 50 times a day, just waiting for you to notice that they can take you where you need to go. Ugh. I feel like an idiot. This is not a challenge. This is a reality check.