I’m carrying a bit of an arm injury at the moment, and can’t put any weight on it, so I haven’t been able to cycle to work for the last couple of days. Instead I’ve had to switch to the bus.
This is the first time since I’ve moved out to the ‘burbs that I’ve resorted to the bus on my commute. There are no direct routes to near my work, so I have to catch one bus into the city centre, and then transfer on to another bus to take me out to the office. Even in ideal conditions the journey takes a total of 55 minutes; roughly twice the time it takes to cycle.
Yesterday wasn’t too bad a journey. As I hadn’t ever done the journey before I left especially early at about 7.20am, and I arrived into work before 8.30am. However this morning I made the foolish decision to leave a bit later, and paid the consequences.
Leaving the house at 7.50am, I was on the first bus at 8.00am – but that bus took a full hour, crawling in traffic, to reach the city centre. The second bus took a further 20 minutes to get me to my office. And so it was almost 9.30am by the time I arrived at work – 1 hour and 40 minutes after I set off. I could have walked it quicker! I certainly could have cycled it in a fraction of the time.
I looked on enviously this morning as all the cyclists sped past the bus. On a bike the impact of traffic congestion is minimal, and it take roughly the same amount of time to do a journey, regardless of the time of day or season of the year. I guess that’s one of the reasons I love to cycle.
I just hope my injury clears up quickly, as I don’t think I can stand many more of these bus journeys!
This morning I decided that I just couldn’t face the bus again, so I switched back to the bike. I figured that, even if my wrist injury flares up, I’d still be better off pushing the bike on foot than being stuck on a crawling bus.