No transit

First I want to wish all the Americans a happy Independence Day! This is one of my favorite holidays b/c it forces us to remember our history and how lucky we are to live in this country.

This year hubby and I are going to watch our city's downtown concert and fireworks show. We've lived in this city for 2 years and last year went out of town for the 4th and so missed their celebration. But our city was rated recently as having one of the country's best fireworks displays, so I guess we better not miss it again.

But one thing this city does not have the best of is public transit. We are urban dwellers and love the city life and the ability to get around easily. Except this city makes it impossible to use public transit to get around and so anything not in walking distance requires a car. And we both hate to drive and hate to park.

The thing is, our bus system is designed as a bunch of spokes that go into and out of downtown. It seems like it would be convenient for those who work downtown and want to use the bus for commuting. But if you want to go anywhere other than downtown, the bus will do you no good. Unless you want to take the bus all the way downtown and transfer to another bus that goes out on another spoke. Not convenient at all. For example, I walk 20 minutes to to work everyday, but looked into how long it would take to use the bus on days when it rained. We live south of downtown, but almost due west of my job. It would take an hour and 40 minutes to get to work by bus. So I have to drive on rainy days.

But today we thought, "hey, the fireworks are downtown, let's take the bus." Parking would be crowded and expensive anyway. There is actually a bus stop right at our corner. So I looked up the schedule to see what time we should walk out to the corner.

The last bus leaves downtown at 7:15pm. Doh! I guess we will drive after all.