Another one rides the bus

This morning I implemented my grandly ambitious plan of commuting by public bus from Seattle to Redmond. I decided on Thursday of last week that I officially can’t take it anymore. The commute from Greenwood to Microsoft is slowly killing me. After gritting my teeth through another hour and a half commute to travel 13 miles across the 520, I actually looked up my route on Metro’s Trip Planner and realized it wasn’t that bad. An hour to and from work, but an hour reclaimed! An hour of reading! Of listening to books on tape! An hour daydreaming or people watching! I could only imagine the possibilities… A few points of interest regarding today’s commute:

1. First off, I downloaded the “Seattle Bus” app for my iPhone from the App Store last night for $9.99. Steep price, yes, but it’s an awesome app that gives real time arrival times for your bus route. I’m not sure if it’s based off of GPS or what, but it’s accurate. You can see exactly how many minutes you have until your bus actually arrives vs. going off the scheduled time. This feature kept the anxiety low all morning (I’ll get to this in a sec).

2. Did not work out this morning. Had intentions to. Set the alarm, but when it went off I made an on-the-spot decision that trying to run AND take the bus was too much this morning. So I ended up getting up at 6:15. Still too late, I’ll adjust this tomorrow. Will start running again in the evenings until I can develop a habit and then will maybe switch to mornings. We’ll see.

3. My first bus, the 48, comes every 12-15 minutes. I mistakenly thought I could take the 7:38 instead of the 7:27 and still catch my connecting bus at the 520 transfer point. Um…no. I realized this after it was too late. I still had time though to get my latte at Wayward (new barista, coffee not as good, might switch to Neptune) and had only a few minutes to wait for the 7:38 bus. All was good in the world.

4. Read about 50 pages of The Kaizen Way – loving this book.

5. Confirmed schedules en route – the 7:38 was to arrive at the 520 transfer spot at 8:08. The connecting bus was supposed to depart this same spot at 8:06 L Could I make it?

6. As it turned out – yes! Thank goodness for my Seattle Bus app! I was able to see that the connecting bus was running 11 minutes behind schedule. This caused me to relax and enjoy my latte and book. I caught my connecting bus with less than 10 minutes of waiting at the connecting spot. Yay!

7. Arrived at the stop on 148th and 51st in Redmond at 8:46. Had a leisurely walk into Red West. All in all, probably walked ½ mile total this morning. That’s a full mile per day vs. sitting in my car for 1.5-2 hours. Another yay!

8. The commute in went off without a hitch. I loved it. Got some serious reading done and I feel like I’ve actually learned a thing or two. Might download some NPR podcasts tonight.

9. Another victory for public transportation!