The First Adventure

I'm over-my-head busy today, but I couldn't not write this down while it was at the top of mind.

This weekend was a series of new adventures for me, including my first-ever all-night stay at The Hobbit Hole. The Hobbit Hole sort of resembles an inhabited locale now, rather than a dumping ground for used cardboard. The bathroom is completely unpacked. The kitchen is completely unpacked (if still disorganized). The bedroom is making progress. If you close your eyes in the other locations, it's not so bad. Really. Just really, really boring (I still can't find my CD player and have no cable or Internet, so it is also really, really quiet, which about drove me insane).

But the BIG "First Adventure" came this morning. The Hoopty needs new tires, so I dropped it off at the tire place three blocks from The Hobbit Hole on my way to work, and caught the bus. Yes, this morning was Sara's first experience with Salt Lake public transit.

I'm no public transit flunkie - I commuted via Metro and bus when I worked in downtown DC, and often used the Metro and/or bus to get around even after starting a job in the suburbs. I've seen more of underground Manhattan and Boston than I have aboveground, due to the amount I've ridden the Subway and the T. And, with Salt Lake's "once you get it, you can find anything" addressing system, I figured it shouldn't be that difficult (or expensive) to get around via the UTA.

Problem #1: The handy-dandy trip planner (which pales compared to WMATA's trip planner for Metro) told me that the fastest, easiest way to get to work from the tire store (exactly 41 blocks) had me disembark at my final location at an intersection that I am convinced does not exist. No lie. The street I am on dead-ends into a golf course, an interstate and a mountain. UTA told me I needed to get off somewhere where those three things converge. So ... I took the long way - involving a seven-block walk in the wrong direction.

Problem #2: I live 7 miles from the office, putting the tire store at just under 7 miles - a 15-minute drive. The "long" version of the bus trek, including the 7-block walk (I walked this to avoid having to transfer busses twice - I need the exercise and the morning was lovely, anyhow), took ONE HOUR to arrive at my destination (no wonder, the route took me 25 blocks out of the way), since apparently UTA is like all bus systems and runs chronically 5-10 minutes behind.

Problem #3: I have a reverse commute. I am going outbound, while everyone else is inbound. This means that the only people riding the bus are Salt Lake's version of sketchy (no Utah "sketchy" can come close to the sketchy people with whom I've shared close quarters on Metro, Subway and the T, but still...am I the only one that has figured out commuting backward is better than the alternative?) and the busses only run every 20-30 minutes. You miss one, you're doomed. I was a nervous wreck the entire commute, wondering who I would call if I ended up stranded somewhere between home and work, in a location that wasn't really on the way to either.

But ... I made it. It's cheap, the bus was air-conditioned and both of my drivers spoke English as a first language, which means I could actually understand them when they announced the intersections. This is one area in which UTA has a leg up on any other transit system I've ever ridden. I tried not to feel conspicuous as me, the nearly-seven-months-pregnant-woman-in-a-skirt (clearly, I wasn't thinking when I got dressed this morning), was hanging out on a couple of major street corners in the Salt Lake Valley. It was a little surreal - I felt like, possibly, I was the only person in the valley using public transit today - something that has never happened to me during rush hour in any other city.

The best part of the adventure? The swinging metal suspension bridge I had to cross to get over a creek between the bus stop and my office. For 30 seconds, I really did feel like I wasn't too far off in describing my new home to a friend as "The Outpost of the American West."

Now ... if I can just figure out how to get home tonight...