The glass half – no, actually 90% full!

(Written on Friday, June 4 but lack of web access delayed posting.)

Okay, so I hopped in a car to avoid being stranded in San Diego.  My perfectionist tendencies can make it easy to focus on those ten minutes rather than the whole rest of the day.  However, in the big picture, I think the other twelve transit trips I took yesterday were pretty successful.  Let’s recap:

• 5:45am, walk about a mile from home to BART
• 6:00am, BART ride to Oakland Coliseum station
• 6:13am, AirBART (operated by AC Transit) to OAK
• 7:20am, Southwest Airlines flight to San Diego (mileage not included – not sure where that fits!)
• 9:00am, San Diego Transit bus 992 and bus 7 to Balboa Park
• 9:30am, walk about a half mile to conference location
• 10:00am-5:00pm, attend conference (part of which was, ironically, in the automotive museum! Ha!)
• 5:30pm, bus not showing so we accept the ride to Santa Fe train station
• 5:55pm, Amtrak Pacific Surfliner to Los Angeles Union Station
• 8:55pm, Metro Red Line to 7^th Street/Metro Center Station
• 9:15pm, walk a block to my hotel

Let’s see…I think I used every possible existing type of transportation except for boat, bike, and hot air balloon.  Five different transit systems in three cities.  The good, the bad, and the non-motorized.  Total cost (not including airfare) was $46, a heck of a lot cheaper than renting a car.  So although I will continue to be a bit grumpy about hitching a ride in San Diego, overall yesterday was an incredible transportation adventure!

It makes today’s travel intinerary of Metro to Burbank Bus to airline to AirBART to BART feel so simple…but man, I can’t wait to get home and stay there for a couple of days.  =)