Dead car = Back to busses, at least for a while…

Cars… Can't live with ’em, can’t drive them off a cliff…

Between my vehicle having been “officially” totaled last year (though it was still drivable) and the sudden development of a deep engine problem, it’s just not worth spending the money to fix the car. $4,000 or so for a used replacement engine, yeesh…

Add to that some financial uncertainty, so I can’t really justify buying a new vehicle for a while, and the net result is that I’m back to commuting by bus starting next week, after returning a loaner car.

The bus-passes are more reasonable these days, at least — still nearly $100 per month, but that $100 pass can get me to pretty much anywhere I need to go for the foreseeable future. And since my last long stint of commuting by public transport, I’ve moved, and am much closer to an east-west cross-town route that I can use to get to light-rail in one direction and most of the north-south routes going the other direction.

For the time being, my daily commute involves two routes, and about a 30-minute trip. Not too bad, all things considered…

Holiday Schedules...

I've mentioned recently that my older daughter is taking public transport to and from school, now that she's in college. Today will, I suspect, be an object-lesson for her about checking bus-schedules after a holiday weekend. She left a bit before I did this morning, and I saw her at her bus-stop as I was on my way in to work. After I looped around to actually head in to work, she was no longer at the stop, and I assumed that she'd gotten onto a bus and was on her way.

Nope.

Had she checked the RTD website, she might've noticed the announcement at the top of the page:

Buses today were running on a Saturday schedule.

So, no bus at her usual stop. Which means that there was no bus she could take without a substantial walk to get to the light-rail station. And that also means no bus back home from the light-rail station.

Which likely means that I'll be trying to pick her up today.

That's something I'll also have to remember if I end up doing the bus-commute thing any time soon...