The Zen of Public Transport

Eh, what the hell, first night, I'm still excited; figure I'd copy and paste an entry from one of my old blogs, made a year & 4 months ago. It's just like free content (^_^).

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I have not touched the steering wheel of a car since I was fifteen. At one point, I got my permit, took driver's ed, learned to drive, and then was given a choice: I could have a car, or live in Japan as a foreign exchange student for a year.

I've never looked back.

At that time, since I wasn't going to be able to afford the car payments, gas, and insurance anytime in that foreseeable future, I never went for my license. I satisfied myself with the thought that, if I ever had to, I could still "technically" drive. Not "legally", but if I had a friend dying of a heart attack in the back seat, at least I could "physically" drive. With student loans to pay off and other expenses from living in the bay area, I still don't feel that I have the finances enough to buy a car - and maintain it - yet. In the future, I may buy a car and become one of the commuting masses, but that is far off.

Financial implications aside, I've found that public transportation has some advantages to it. Advantages that go beyond worrying about parking fees or whether or not your car will be vandalized. Advantages that even go beyond being about to drink on the Caltrain (an advantage I've witnessed but have yet felt the need to try).

If you let it, embrace it, public transportation can affect your world view. Sure, in the larger scope, it's inconvenient as all hell. The commuter train comes once an hour, and the light rail is unreliable, and the company you may keep on the late night buses may be unsettling. But it gives so much in mental, physical and psychological training.

Public transportation gives you endurance.

The physical training is obvious: train stops don't always overlap, and it can be a good 45 minute walk (one-way) to get from the station you got off of to the place where you actually want to go. I recently walked with a friend from Menlo Park to East Palo Alto in search of duct tape and nails. This is a friend who climbs rock walls and does break-your-body ninja training (literally). This friend petered out after 3/4 of the journey, and collapsed the minute he sat down.

Public transportation gives you acceptance.

Mental training is perhaps less obvious, but still visible. When you have to wait 30 minutes per stop for each connection, you learn patience. Perhaps, it is more correct to say that patience is forced upon you. You can get pissy and angry for half an hour, or you can chill and accept the wait.

Public transportation gives you intention.

Psychological training is a doozy though. When you have to juggle an bewildering array of connections that have to be timed just so in order to get to the other side of the state, you learn to prioritize schedules and values. You learn to be fast and efficient when you have something to catch, and to appreciate the view and the journey when you realize that going directly to the station will only earn you 20 minutes of staring at the train tracks. When you make the decision to go your friend's pad 90 miles north by using 4 different bus lines with connection windows of 15 minutes, you commit to a course of action and you act (and schedule) accordingly.

Public transporation gives you zen.

I recently was with a party of people making a public transit journey from the peninsula to the city (San Francho). It was fun stepping back and watching myself direct the journey. I felt the heat on me, and I pushed them to get to the station with a few minutes to spare before the train arrived, and those minutes were spent trying to get the blasted card readers to work. I felt the flow, and told them to relax, and lo, we caught a train that went where we wanted to go.

Of course, to be fair, we we were trying to make our final connection of the night, the once-an-hour train was on its final run and had dropped to its once-every-two-hours schedule. We were faced with an hour and a half wait for the next train, with a fairly chilly night enveloping us. Pragmatically, we threw in the towel, chickened out and caught a cab ride home.

Public transportation is still a pain in the ass.