Yesterday, I got to do something completely out of the ordinary. It was something exciting and new to me, and I had a lot of fun. To some, this might seem mundane and/or fantastically trivial, but as a regular commuter, it was fun for me. Granted, I've done it before, but I've never used this particular service.

I had to head downtown in the middle of the day, so because parking is so expensive during the day, and because I was up for an adventure, I took the bus! Actually, the bus I took is a special one called Rapid Ride. It's like a city bus, except the route is much more restricted, and the buses have a cool feature that allows them to manipulate traffic lights so that they hit mostly green lights. The result is a fairly quick ride to wherever it is you're headed.

The nice part was that it cost a grand total of $2 to get downtown and back, compared to the at least $8 I would have had to pay to park. And besides saving money, I got to see a huge variety of people. If you ever want to be exposed to true diversity, ride the bus. There are so many people from so many different walks of life that ride them. It's literally a culture all its own.

Getting to see the guy sleeping in the seat behind me, the nervous guy who thought everyone was staring at him funny, the woman who cringed when I asked if she was getting off at a certain stop (she said "No! Why?", and the only reason I had asked was to make sure I let her go first; she was relieved, though, when I explained myself), and the drunk was certainly an eye-opening experience.

I may just have to do this again sometime.