So a few days ago, I decided to take the bus to and from school for my Monday/Wednesday classes since the Rio Grande Campus of ACC is so close to my house.
Yesterday I researched the route I would need to take and approximately what time I would need to be at the bus station.
Now, Tom had said that I could ride the UT shuttle bus for free, so I thought I would try that out.
So this morning I head down to the bus stop at about 8:15am, and the bus came about 8:25am. I’m one of the first stops, so there weren’t that many (if any) people on board all ready. I took a seat near the front of the bus.
Now, you must take in mind that this is the first time EVER that I have used a bus on my own. I’ve always done this with someone else.
So the stop I want to get off at is the Rio Grande and 15th street stop. As we’re coming up on Rio Grande (the bus is driving down 15th street), I notice that the bus driver is not in the right-most lane. And so I think that he may not stop at the stop I need. Now here’s the funny part. I know that if you pull the little thing, the bus driver will stop. Well, I was worried about having to pay for my fare because I’m not a UT student (I had brought money to pay in case I needed to). So I look at the time, and determine that I should have enough time to walk to school from where ever the bus does end up stopping (all this time hoping that the bus would stop before it got too far away). Well, I should have just grown a spine and pulled the thingy, cause the bus didn’t stop until we were at about 20th and San Jacinto! That’s only about 1.24 miles away from where I needed to be! It was about 8:38am by this time. My first class didn’t start till 9:10am, so I had a good 40 min to get to ACC. Well, it only took about 24 min to walk the 1.24 miles.
So, my reworked plan was to just ride the regular bus back home. But, as I’m done with school I decide that I wanted to try an experiment. I would walk HOME as well! I had called Tom right after I got off the bus to tell him about my unfortunate situation. I commented that I may be just as far away from ACC as The Office is. he disagreed. So I wanted to see exactly how long it would take. I had some time to kill, so I thought, why not? I'll burn off some extra calories, and get some Sun. I've got two legs... I'm self-sufficient and independent kind of guy. I don't need no stinking bus!
It turns out I live 1.91 miles away from the Rio Grande Campus. It took me about 40 min to make the walk. I left at 1:43pm and got home at 2:23
Now it's time for some of the lessons I've learned:
1) "These shoes AIN'T for walking" - if I'm going to do this again, I need to wear better shoes. Running shoes, perhaps.
2) My backpack weighs far too much. I've got not only my books, etc in there, but it’s also my laptop bag. Talk about weight. I just weighed it, and it’s about 30 lbs! Now I have a lot more sympathy for guys in the army that have to do 6 hour marches wearing all their gear, which – if I’m not mistaken – can weigh upwards of 60 lbs! freakin’ heck….
3) YAY Texas summers! Boy, it was hot out there… just walking. I wasn’t walking fast or anything like that… and I was pretty slow. But, boy did I work up a sweat.
So in closing: Yay for walking, boo for heavy backpacks.
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3 comments:
hahahaha oh Andrew you are so adorable.
Next time, pull the string, do it!
Also, yay for blogging on the squawk! It's been in terrible disuse.
For the record, pulling on the string is for the next official stop. So you have to know where the official stops are. The ER Campus Shuttle that you took, it turns out, stops very near 21st and Guadelupe. So next time, just wait a little longer and you will end up much closer to your destination. Also, don't be afraid to talk to the bus drivers, they are usually nice and are always informative.
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