I rode the bus to Sinclair for the first time on the first day of spring quarter. I never planned on taking the bus to school, but both of my vehicles died over spring break\u2014one from long life and the other from catastrophic failure. \u00a0I\u2019ve been on the RTA ever since.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of things I never considered before riding the bus that now I deal with every day. I never worried about the weather. \u00a0I made my own schedule.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t consider the cost of transportation, unless you count gas as a cost.\u00a0 I had a car.\u00a0 What did I care?<\/p>\n
Now I check the weather. \u00a0I have alarms on my phone so I don\u2019t miss my bus.\u00a0 My bus pass is part of my monthly expenses, and time is a precious commodity I schedule with care.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been learning a lot about public transportation, things that my co-riders seem to have memorized already.\u00a0 For example, there\u2019s a yellow strip that you have to push on the back door before you exit.\u00a0 Not all stops are covered or easy to get to.\u00a0 There\u2019s a difference between northbound and southbound traffic, a lesson that landed me in Salem instead of Sinclair.<\/p>\n
Since I started riding the bus my respect for people who depend on public transportation has gone up tremendously.\u00a0 That\u2019s not to say I didn\u2019t respect them before, only that I appreciate the difficulties they face more than I ever did when I had a car.\u00a0 I see now how a trip to the doctor\u2019s office can turn into an all-day excursion or how getting to work on time can be thwarted by a bus that\u2019s running 10 minutes late.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to complain.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019m grateful that Dayton has a public transportation system.\u00a0 I can get to school, the grocery store and home from the bus, and I can get a discounted bus pass through the Tartan Bookstore.\u00a0 Even though I have two fewer cars than I did last quarter, I feel lucky that I can still get around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I rode the bus to Sinclair for the first time on the first day of spring quarter. I never planned on taking the bus to school, but both of my vehicles died over spring break\u2014one from long life and the other from catastrophic failure. \u00a0I\u2019ve been on the RTA ever since. There are a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[599,1976,598],"class_list":["post-4668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-bus","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-rta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1di","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4668"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4715,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668\/revisions\/4715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}