We're going to have to work on this timing thing.

Colin started his new job today, or rather, training for his new job. His hours are 1pm to 9:30pm for the next five weeks, and his office is about half an hour away from here. However, he's running out of synthroid and we've both been getting to bed kind of late, so despite my best efforts to get him up and moving around 10am so that we could run some errands today, he was still a zombie till about noon.

"Can you take the bus to campus and do what you need to do there?" he asked, and I said sure, because we do have a little money. Except he drove off with all the change, and the bus drivers don't take twenties. This left two options: bicycle, or walk. We live about three miles from campus, so I would rather not walk in the cold. My bike has issues right now (something's wrong with one of the derailleurs; Dan diagnosed the problem but couldn't fix it, and I haven't had simultaneous time and money to take it in for repairs), but it seemed the best option. I suited up in lots of warm layers, mounted up, and rode off.

It immediately became clear that either the tires were really low, or I'm weak as a kitten from this bug I haven't shaken yet. My bike pump was broken, so I huffed and puffed over to the Walmart along the way and picked up a portable one. A little while thereafter, I was on the road again, and at 4:40pm I parked at the library. Elapsed travel time: approximately an hour. I could have walked it faster after all. Apparently I am still weak as a kitten, and not being able to shift past 14th (it's a 21-speed) isn't helping either.

I paid my bill, went to my office to pick up a book, chatted with Jurek for a few minutes, stepped outside to check the weather, and decided that taking the bus home was the better part of valor.

I should pause for a moment to say that I do not like the Iowa City bus system. Actually, I don't like bus systems in general. Subways and trains are great, because they can generally be relied upon to arrive and depart according to their printed schedules. Buses do no such thing. Buses are frequently held up in traffic, and at times do not even arrive at all. That was how oralelk missed his plane to Kansas City -- the 10:30am bus either arrived more than ten minutes early or entirely failed to arrive, the 11am bus also failed to arrive, and his flight left 13 minutes early as well. Tonight, the bus home arrived about ten minutes early, but I was conveniently outside talking to Jurek and managed to catch it. During the ride I listened to a woman talk about her deteriorating bones and watched a guy's PalmPilot completely trash him at chess.

There must be regional attitudes about public vs. private transportation. Big cities which don't have a high water table (i.e., not Houston) typically have subways and trains; I've ridden the D.C. Metro, the Boston T and the Chicago El, and I liked all of them. Even Dallas appears to have integrated trains into the DART, and Houston is taking baby steps forward with the oft-maligned downtown light rail.

And why do Houstonians malign light rail so? One simple reason -- it makes driving downtown a hell of a lot harder than it used to be. We're a driving people, and in Texas a car means freedom. Having a car means "Hey, let's go get dinner," or "Hey, let's go to Austin for the weekend," or "Let's go to the bookstore half a mile away." Sans auto, one bums rides from friends, or takes very short walks, or simply stays home. There's this perception -- no doubt enhanced by the fact that the Houston Metro is even less reliable than the Iowa City public transit system -- that the bus is something one takes only when one has absolutely no other choice, thus explaining the ease with which one can sell even the ugliest, most noxious-fume-emitting beater in my beloved hometown.

Here, not so. People drive a great deal, but there is also much encouragement of bicycling, and the buses are never empty despite their unreliability. Bus passengers are also much more socioeconomically homogenous here (as much as a mostly-white college town can be considered socioeconomically homogenous). I know lots of people who do not have cars and do not particularly care. For some this makes sense, e.g., professors who spend half the year in other countries and would have to store their vehicles while they're away. In most cases, though, it's just perplexing. Do they have to go grocery shopping every two or three days, since they don't have trunks? What do they do when they need to buy furniture? When they need to move?

(Then again, this is coming from someone who has lived in six separate places since the beginning of 2000. Maybe having a car just makes it easier to be semi-nomadic.)

Don't get me wrong, I like bicycling. But I like being warm while I travel, and being able to get somewhere in a hurry. Perhaps Midwesterners are simply more time-conscious and resistant to the elements.

But I think we need to see about finding a second car.