Monday (1/9/12), I called Charles and told him that I needed to drop my car off at the mechanics and that I needed him to pick me up from there, take me to my daughter's house so that I could babysit and then hopefully pick me up again later that day and take me home.
Trooper that he is, he did all of that! Thank goodness!
In fact, he not only did that, he took me to my class Tuesday night AND... loaned me his truck for a week so that I could go to my yoga retreat that weekend. How wonderful is that?!
I am so grateful to him for all of that!
Having a truck for that week gave me a chance to research options.
I tried using the OCTA (Orange County Transit Authority) bus system web site for finding bus routes... and I learned that the OCTA system for finding routes is horrible and should just be taken down.
The LA Metro web page was better and allowed me to figure out a way to get from LA county to Orange county and back... something I had not been able to figure out a year and a half ago when my other car died. I must have been trying the OCTA website back then. ;-)
THEN... I found google maps! I've used google maps before, but I never noticed that they had a "transit" button. Their system is incredible! It found the same and better routes than the LA system had found. Google maps for transit rocks! Without the google transit I don't think I could be even considering taking the bus. It would be too difficult to figure out.
It turns out that for the hours I need to travel, most of the time the bus stop I'm going to have to go to is a mile away and sometimes on the other side, in Orange County, I will have a similar trek to or from the bus stop.
In thinking about it, and trying to bring joy into everything, I just wasn't sure I would be able to stay in "joyous" mode, while doing a mile walk to a bus stop very early in the morning... plus, I walk slowly and having to get to places by a certain time might have become an issue.
I researched options and decided that I should get a scooter! A skateboard seemed like it would have too big of a learning curve, but a scooter didn't seem like it would have the same learning curve, and it seemed like a way to bring fun into the trip!
My friend Mary offered to loan me her electric scooter. She is going to get it checked out first though, because there was something wrong with it. She says it weighs 100 lbs! I can't see myself taking three buses with something that weighs 100 lbs, but, I think it would be really nice to have for around my home area, for shopping and going to the bank.
I did a lot of research on scooters and even visited the local Walmart to try one out. It seems like it will work. In keeping with my goal of paying off debt I don't want to spend money on a new one, at least until I know that I will use it and that I truly am committed to riding the bus. So, I posted on the freecycle page that my car had died and that I was hoping someone had a scooter that they weren't using to help make my bus trips better.
You have to keep learning new things and doing new things or your brain shrinks (literally!). So, it seems awesome that I am learning how to take a bus and hopefully how to ride a scooter! My brain will be healthy! :-)
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