Life's more peaceful by bus

I don't know how I will ever quantify this experiment. By that I mean I don't know how to calculate how much money I'll save, if any, by biking and bussing instead of driving. I also don't know how much time I will "waste" by biking and bussing instead of driving. However, I suspect that, by the end of the two week period, I will have a sense of how different I feel. I'm already beginning to feel different. Here are some examples: Deciding not to drive in order to save petrol etc seems to come with some other spin offs. We have definitely started to be more careful with our spending generally. I am baking more and figuring out ways to save money here and there. The children are fully on board which is really heartwarming and there is something about it all that feels like it's drawn us closer together as a family. That probably sounds a bit gooier than it is, but there's an element of truth in it. I guess it's something about changing a dynamic in a household and how that has flow on effects in many ways - so far, I think, all pretty good flow on effects. I think I'll be able to explain it better a bit further down the track, but I wanted to note it here to alert myself to when the feeling started.

This morning I caught a bus at 8.50am to visit my mother who lives in a rest home/private hospital. It's only one bus ride away as well as a shortish walk. The trip into Hamilton East also allowed me to do some other banking, posting and shopping items that weren't easily done near home so it worked well. Mum was pleased to see me and slightly surprised that I had bussed. I told her about the experiment, though she didn't ask why. Either she assumed that it was because of the swiftly increasing petrol prices, the state of my van or the general quirkiness of my personality. I walked back up to the shopping area after my visit and completed my other errands before boarding a return bus home - all just minutes within my two hour window of opportunity to make use of the free return trip on the bus. So the travel for that trip was a total of $2.30 and the amount of time I was away was only slightly longer than I would have been if I'd taken the van.

Speaking of the van, my husband has driven it to work for the last few days because his new motorbike has been in getting seen to. The news today is that everything is hunky dory again and the fixing people seem confident that it will start well every time and not experience brake lock again - all very important.

A lady phoned from the bus company today. She was updating me on my complaint about Tuesday's bus driver from hell. She apologised and explained that he wasn't one of the normal drivers. He was called in due to sickness and will not be used again. The interesting thing was that I wasn't the only one who had complained about his driving that day! It made me really glad that I had phoned up about it and I feel even more resolved to do similar things in the future, whenever necessary.