Why I'm still taking the bus

A couple of weeks ago, I pledged to ride Metro to work for a week to goad high school students to park their cars and take the school bus.

I'm still shuttling along a month later, about three days a week.

A friend tells me that fuel-consumption guilt isn't enough to make most people try the bus, that there has to be a personal payoff. I'm easily guilted so I don't know, but maybe he's right.

I do know that three factors make me willing to put up with some inconvenience (frizzy hair, longer days, a constant search for $1 bills) to keep boarding that bus.

First, I realize that when I drive myself downtown, I scurry right into the parking garage as if I had blinders on. What I never knew I was missing is a city waking up. I like the three-block walk to my office and seeing people duck into Starbucks for a latte or greeting a friend on the way to the office. There is something downright charming about watching Jeffrey McClorey, owner of Bromwell's, calmly sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store while the shop cat, Cinders, stretches and shakes herself awake in the front window.

Second and related, taking the bus has made me feel I've made my peace with working in the city. I've embraced it. Until now, I saw my life as a dichotomy: I live my "real life" in the suburbs, but spend my days in the city -- without ever totally engaging with it. Now I see my life much more holistically, recognizing how much I enjoy the urban experience and not feeling that I cross into a parallel universe when I hit my downtown exit.

Third, as I watch all the cars carrying a single person make their way downtown, I am struck by the inefficiency of it and by the enormous waste of natural resources. It just looks odd, like putting one egg in a carton. I don't judge those drivers -- I've been one of them for more than 20 years -- but I do see the collective impact of my preference for convenience and autonomy when collaboration and mutual dependence would be better for the planet and even for my own state of mind.