rachel@home

Timing

This morning I had an appointment to take my car in for a tune up and general looking-over. I had looked up the location of the repair shop and happily found that it was right on my usual bus route. Yay.

So after I'd taken the girls to school, I drove my car over to the shop and dropped it off, then took off for the bus stop. Execept I couldn't find it. In fact, I couldn't find any bus stops.

I'd written down that the stop was at 79th and Redmond Way, and realized that I was on 70th and Redmond way, which seemed farther than the 0.2 mile that the transit site said I'd have to walk, but not impossible.

After a minute of not being sure which way to go, due to Redmond Way running sort of diagonal, which means that it crosses north-south streets whose numbers increase, and east-west streets whose numbers decrease, I started towards town. And I kept going and going and going. And at one point, I found 76th street, and thought, yay, almost there.

Haha. Those diagonal streets will get you every time.

I kept walking, and walking, and endlessly walking. I decided that if nothing else, I'd walk home eventually, and then at least I'd be somewhere.

Then, there was an intersection up ahead, and I had high hopes that it was the magic intersection. And sure enough, before I even read the street sign, I knew it was.

Do you know how I knew it was? Because, in a heartbreaking moment of really bad timing, when I was still 1.5 blocks away from the intersection, my bus swooped in and swooped out, leaving me still a block away from where I needed to be.

I arrived, read the sign, and realized that was the last bus for another half hour. So then I walked (more walking!) down to Jamba Juice and got breakfast, which seemed like a small reward for all the walking I'd done.

I have now looked up where the auto place really is, and what bus I really need to take to get back in time, so have much higher hopes about the afternoon trip. The car place hasn't called yet, either, so I'm hoping that means that there's nothing unusually wrong with my car.

Posted by Rachel at June 3, 2004 12:07 PM