Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Tucson, AZ: Bus


Sungo bus card, Tucson, Arizona. April 2019.



Tucson is the year of more public transportation.


I'll be living about two miles from the university and downtown, walkable, but only just, and only if it's not too hot and not too cold, and not too early, and not too late.

The hassle of finding (and to yours truly, the frugal Swiss progeny, paying for) parking is a pain in the ass, of course, so there you go - the bus.  Tucson seems to have a robust public transportation system.

I bought my loadable bus card a few days before Tucson's 2019 Folk Festival. My brilliant plan was to park at my future digs, then walk the little block to my bus stop, hop on, and get off about a block from festival central.

Only, I didn't take into account that the frequency of the bus runs on Sundays is different than during the week, and that if I missed one bus, it would be an hour before the next would arrive.

Doh.

So I missed the first bus, realized the immensity of my error, thus tracked down another stop on another route that would have a sooner bus, went there, but missed that window, then walked to another, only to see my bus zip by, two minutes before its scheduled time at the stop that I was one minute away from.

I surrendered to the bus fail for the day, and checked out Uber, but I'd uninstalled it after Mexico City, and my phone wouldn't reinstall it because I didn't have enough space, and it'd take me awhile to decide what stuff to cull in order to make space, so ...

I considered walking downtown, but a hot sun scowled above, and I, cowed, slithered back to my car, and told myself lesson learned.

Next time.

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