simont | (no subject)

‘See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places.’
– Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

For several days now I've been getting around town on buses, because my car has (once again) demonstrated all the reliability and build quality of the Millennium Falcon.

Public transport is, of course, terribly slow and inconvenient compared to personal transport. You have to walk to the nearest access point; you have to stand around waiting until a bus or train deigns to turn up; you have to tolerate slow zigzag roundabout routes from A to B and repeated stops to exchange other passengers; you have to walk from the access point where you end up to the place you actually wanted to be. Not to mention that if you're unlucky you have to change vehicles in the middle of your trip and do half of this lot all over again. And that you're restricted in the times of day you can travel, so taking public transport to a distant club or party means you have to either find somewhere to crash or leave annoyingly early to get the last train back. None of this is a surprise, and all of it is annoying compared to the ability of your own bike or car to deliver you from one front door directly to another, in your time, by as direct a route as you can invent, whenever you want.

But in spite of all that, there's something that feels somehow magical about public transport, which personal transport just doesn't seem to have for me. I think it's got something to do with the fact that I leave my starting point on foot, and arrive at my destination the same way, as if I'd walked the whole distance, and yet the two points are so far apart that it would have been infeasible to actually walk all the way. And I don't have to exert physical effort to move myself the extra distance, as I would on a bicycle, or mental concentration as I would driving a car. I just find something that's going the way I want to go, grab on, and let it carry me to where I want to be.

I shall certainly be glad to have the Falcon back with its hyperdrive fixed: that feeling of magic would probably evaporate quite quickly if I used public transport all the time, leaving me with nothing but the various annoyances. But as long as I only have to use it once in a while, I find it actually makes for rather a pleasant change of pace.