1st experience riding public trasnportation

Let me share my lame adventure of my 1st day riding the Express Carta bus to and from work.

So yesterday I choose to try out the Express Carta bus instead of driving to work and having to park in a parking garage which costs $12 and that was the cheaper one! The Express Carta isn't the regular bus. It makes only a few stops and is mainly for people who work downtown but live in West Ashley or Mount Pleasant. I live in West Ashley. Now it's a park and ride type of deal which is really great. The stop in West Ashley is at the Citadel Mall which is probably a mile from where I live. So it works out great. Instead of dealing with traffic getting downtown and leaving downtown I just have to drive over to the mall, leave my car and hop on the bus. Another great reason to ride the bus is it's $3 a ride for the bus which is half of what I was paying to park downtown. Also I get to sleep in about 10mins later than when I drove myself.

So back to my tale of how the first day riding the bus went. I woke up yesterday morning, got ready and headed over to the mall. My bus pick up time is 8:05. I got there around 7:50 since it was my first day riding I didn't want to miss it. The bus showed up, I got on, paid my $3 and sat down. Everything went fine. I got off the bus at the correct stop and walked the 2 blocks to work. I felt pretty good about everything. Now the ride home was a little different. I walked back to the same bus stop that I got off at. That was my first mistake. I looked around wondering if there was a bus stop across the street that I should be standing at instead. Yes, the thought did occur to me that I should be on the otherside of the street to catch a bus going that direction. Unfortunately for me I didn't see one. Now the bus stop pick up time in the pamphlet thing I had said the bus would be there at 5:31, well it showed up at 5:15. I was a little skeptical but got on it anyways. And of course it was going the opposite direction I needed to be going. So I rode it all the way to Mount Pleasant, which is the end of the line on that side, West Ashley being the end of the other side. So at the last stop in Mount Pleasant when everyone else had gotten off the bus, I went up to the bus driver and told him what happened. He was nice about it and explained that the bus turns around and becomes that bus and drives the route back to West Ashley. That's exactly what I was hoping he would say. So I sat back down and rode the whole route back to West Ashley. The bus driver was really nice and even pointed out the stop that I will be at in the afternoons. Finally after a whole extra hour of being on the bus I arrived at the mall. Totally I rode 30mins in the wrong direction, another 30mins in the right direction back downtown (btw I was the only person on the bus during that time) and finally the 30mins from downtown to the mall. 

It wasn't bad or scary, just boring. I felt pretty stupid of course. At least it won't happen again and now I know where my bus stop downtown is.