I wondered how long it would take before riding the bus made me cry, and just over a week ago I found out.

Five days.

Yep – a measly 5.

I’d like to defend myself by blaming it on the blizzard of November 2015, but honestly it was my own fault.  I was determined to get to the New Towne community info meeting at Heartland on the 21st, but with 8 1/2″ of snow, I was unable to take the leisurely 45-minute stroll I had originally planned. I figured if I wore my hat, and my hood, and my snow boots – if I walked quickly to keep warm – if I took the Charles Street bus from the stop less than a mile south of my house – it would be no problem.  I do love snow, after all.

The problem came when I arrived at my stop six minutes early.  Apparently driving snow gathers on a stationary object, so while standing on that corner, I was gathering snow – particularly on my face and at the top of my boots, which began to soak my jeans.  I started to worry that the bus wasn’t coming.  Or that I had read the schedule wrong and thus missed it (but I was watching as I walked toward Charles street, so how could I have??  Still, the snow and cold had caught up to me, and I was near tears.  It also didn’t help that I was standing on a busy corner by a stoplight, and almost immediately after I had arrived, a man I didn’t know offered me a ride.  I had graciously declined, of course, asserting that the bus would be along any minute.  But now it was a good ten minutes later, and there was no sign of the bus.

My phone was almost dead (who forgets to charge her phone when she’s planning to venture away from home for several hours on the bus?!?) but I did have my route guidebook in my bag; however, I did not relish the idea of letting snow into the section of my bag that also contained student papers to grade, nor did I want to have to take my gloves off!

Finally I gave in to the desperate need to know, and I fished out the schedule to find that the time I had thought the bus was arrive was actually its departure time from the transfer center.  My stop was ten minutes later.  UGH.

On the bright side, I hadn’t missed the bus.

A full 20 minutes after I’d arrived at the corner of Rockford and Charles, the bus finally pulled up. When the door opened, a sweet, round-faced woman grinned at me from the driver’s seat and asked, “Do you feel like a snowman?”

Ugh.  Seriously?  Yes I did.  But I managed to smile and respond much more jovially than I’m writing it right now.

I spoke to Ron Clewer as soon as I arrived at Heartland, telling him how he had inspired my experiment and that I had been shocked to realize it takes almost two hours to get home on nights that I pick up Jake after school.  The significance of this project was validated when Mr. Clewer told the crowd about my experience as evidence for building housing for the poor on the east side of town, close to jobs.  It was that moment that I realized that what I am doing really does matter — and I need to remain committed to it, weather and all.  What do people who are actually without transportation do, after all?  They have no choice but to deal.  No matter how cold, wet, far, long… either they shut down their lives, or they suck it up and deal with it.

Wow. We have no idea how spoiled the rest of us are.

The meeting was wholly worth it, so despite the fact that I was half freezing through most of it, I didn’t panic when I realized I was going to miss my bus as the meeting ran late.  Even after I scanned the other bus routes that passed through the Colonial Village stop and realized they all came around the same time – or else I’d have to be on the crosstown bus for almost two hours to get home – I didn’t panic.  I figured I could sit and read or grade papers somewhere before heading back to the bus – and it was totally worth it to have been there.  Luckily, the man sitting in my row introduced himself as a New Towne supporter and when he heard that I was the teacher to whom Ron Clewer was referring in regard to the bus experiment and that I’d just missed my bus, he offered me a ride home, which I gladly accepted — and this time I didn’t even feel guilty!