Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Today was a banner day for modes of transportation. 

Quite a while back now I gave up my campus parking for two reasons: the first being that I really need to exercise that I would get from walking, and two because it was just embarrassing to commute this short a distance in a car.  This arrangement is mostly swell except when for one reason or another I have to go someplace in the middle of the day. 

So today I drove my car (in the morning, taking the boy to school), then I took the bus (to work), and then things really went off the rails. 

The boy's school calls and he needs to be picked up as he has a fever.  I have no car.  There is a bus that goes reasonably close to his school that I can pick up at work.  There really isn't a bus that goes from his school to our house, or maybe there sort of is, or it could be done with a combination of two (or maybe three) buses.  But I'm not certain he's going to be in any kind of head state to make a multi-bus trip home, or to make a fairly long walk.

Also, I don't know this yet, but there's a squall picking up.

I think I cam to the conclusion that what I should do is take the bus to go get him and then take him back to work with me on another bus.  That return trip has the benefit of being simple.  He was going to be picked up at the end of the day by his sitter anyway, and as it happens that sitter will be on campus where I'll be taking him anyway.  In a staggering coincidence I had brought in our portable booster to give to the sitter in case they wanted to just pick him up in their car rather than doing something more complicated.  So I grab the booster just in case and head out to the bus.

Buses in front of campus include 67, 69, 61A, 61B, 61C, and 61D.  Four of those would be fine.  Two would go by the house and I could pick up my car.  Two would go within a block of the school.  The other two are less perfect but really not that long a walk.  Normally during the day, in a scenario where I would get on any one of those buses the wait would not be more than 5 minutes.  When I got to the stop I looked at the realtime website and it said the next bus was 20 minutes away.  That feels too long.

Ok, change of plans.  Bring up the Uber app, hail a car.  This takes less than 2 minutes.  It costs money I wouldn't have to spend, but I've been lead to believe that time was a factor.  So fine.  Take the car to the school and pick up the kid.

This child is not coming with me back to work.

Change plans again.  Out comes the Uber app again.  Another car in less than 2 minutes - good thing I have the booster.  Did I mention there was a storm coming in.  Within one block of school on the way home we're in a blizzard.  The car stalls out going up one of the more modest hills in our neighborhood.  The driver turns around to go around the block and promptly spins out.  The driver tells me I'm going to be his last fare.  I'm hoping that's because he's going to take the rest of the day off rather than that we're about to have a terrible accident.

Oh yeah, while we're in the car coming home I juggled the schedule for one of my classes and cancelled another.  I also changed up the schedule for the sitter and let them know they didn't have to pick the child up at school as I had already done it.  What I do need is someone to come watch the boy for an hour at the house because I have to go back to the office for an hour because I had left all my stuff there (because when I left I thought I was going to be going back, oops).

So the sitter comes to the house and I take the bus again (to work).

I was thinking I was going to have to take the bus yet again to get home but things lined up in my favor and one of my colleagues happened to be leaving for the day reasonably close to when I needed to go.  So I caught a ride home that way.

Car-car-bus-uber-uber-bus-friend's car.  That's more complicated than it should be.