Boarding a Community Transit bus with a box cutter sticking out of an overall pocket raised nary a security eyebrow.
It wasn’t an airplane. The poor guy wearing paint-splattered pants was on one leg of a two-hour daily commute to his job site.
For some, taking the bus was a lifeline.
For me, it was a one-day way hoot to help save the environment.
Thursday is “National Dump the Pump Day,” when we are asked to take the bus to protect the planet.
Doing my bit, I rode the bus to and from The Herald, some 12 miles one way from my Mill Creek home.
It wasn’t so bad, merely adding little more than an hour of commute time to my day. I caught the 6:50 a.m. bus out of Mill Creek, with a dozen passengers, then rode a second bus from the Ash Way Park-and-Ride in Lynnwood.
A bus rider for 17 years, Jane Forson was on her way to work at the main Snohomish County campus. She caught a bus in Mountlake Terrace, then transferred at the Everett Station hub.
Forson doesn’t own a car. She relies on her brother and a friend for rides when she goes places like the grocery store, she said. When she needs to visit her doctor in Mukilteo, she takes half a day off and gets there by bus.
“I can pretty much go anywhere,” she said. “I see more people taking the bus since gas prices went up.”
At Ash Way, folks headed south jammed onto Seattle quick-trip coaches. Most of the riders had earphones attached to their heads, listening to iPods, or typed messages on cell phones.
My co-pilot via my cell phone was my husband, Chuck. He wanted to make sure I made each transfer correctly. After an industrial accident, he no longer drives. Two weeks ago, he went from our house in Mill Creek to the Everett Mall, and it took him four buses.
Some Friday afternoons, he brings our granddaughters to Everett Station, where I pick them up and head to Concrete to our camping property. That is a real timesaver for our weekend getaways. Chuck said signage is good at bus stops and he doesn’t mind asking drivers where to stand or which coach to catch.
We have good luck using the trip planner feature at communitytransit.org. It offers an easy way to discern potential routes. Forson says the customer service workers at 425-353-RIDE are very helpful.
At Everett Station, I waited 10 minutes, then caught an Everett Transit bus to Hewitt and Hoyt avenues, three blocks from work. As John Wayne said in “The Quiet Man,” getting to my office was “A good stretch of the leg.”
I paid $1.25 in Mill Creek, flashed a transfer at Ash Way, then paid another 50 cents for my short hop on Everett Transit.
Clamping a wheelchair securely to the floor of the ET coach, the driver asked Carl Mann where he was headed.
Mann, 46, has two bum hips and lives at the Everett Gospel Mission. He had an appointment at the Social Security office on Evergreen Way.
He has no choice but to ride the bus.
I like having options, but my one-owner 1993 teal Toyota Corolla does have a couple of problems from old age. I am still determined to take it over 200,000 miles and we are within 20,000 miles of that goal.
On the bus, it felt good not to worry about my Corolla’s front-end rattle. I left my desk at 4:20 p.m., 10 minutes early, and arrived home only 45 minutes later than usual. Sound Transit was deluxe with air conditioning above my head.
If I became a regular bus rider, I would miss stopping at Walgreens on my way to work, or driving to Burger King for lunch. My main contribution would be preserving the environment.
If I am going to save the world, I’ll need to get an iPod.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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