The View from the Bus: On the Road Again

Bus Stop Selfie

This is me, standing at the bus stop near my office.

It's been close to four years since I last rode a city bus here in Columbia. When we moved away from campus we were beyond the reach of the bus routes.

About that same time, though, the school board began to build a new high school two miles to our east, father outside the bus routes than we were. I knew that when the school began operations there would soon be a bus route extending out to it. And that route would go right past my neighborhood.

I've always enjoyed riding the bus occasionally when I've been on their routes. Unfortunately nearly half the homes where we've lived have tended to be on the very edge of the city limits. We've actually lived in four places that were less than a block outside the city limits.

At one of those, our driveway straddled the city limit line. My next door neighbor, the one living on the city side of the driveway, told me the day I moved in that I should just drop my trash bags next to his every Wednesday morning and the city trash collectors would pick them all up. I didn't argue.

Because of our city's edge dwellings, the the nearest bus routes were usually at least a mile's walk away, which isn't conducive to regular use.

I like to ride the bus because it's actually cheaper overall. It can be less convenient, chewing up much more time than it would take to drive yourself to where you need to go. I still drive a car most days to most places I need to be. But having access to the bus again gives me the flexibility I like.

The best part of riding the bus, though, is the experience of the ride.

This probably sounds crazy to a lot of people. In fact, I know some people think I'm nuts to ride the bus when I don't have to.

The bus also affords me the chance to look more closely at God's creation as it rolls by out the window. Driving in CoMo traffic can make rubbernecking dangerous. But with the bus driver as my chauffeur, I'm able to ride in the lap of luxury and enjoy the trip. The day I took the picture above was the first day I've ridden the bus home from work since the new routes began. I posted the photo on my Facebook page with the comment:

Riding the bus home from work today. Trying out the new CoMoConnect setup #busstopselfie

One of my relatives was a bit nonplussed as to why I could possibly choose to ride the bus.

 Her: Who did you set by

Me: There were only 4 other people on the bus, besides the driver. A tired looking lady, obviously on her way home from work. A couple of young men who appeared to be international students from somewhere in the Middle East, and a young black kid who got off at the same stop as I did. We walked together a couple of blocks until I had to turn off.

Her: are you riding again tomorrow if so good luck.

The point she was missing is that the risk opportunity of being around people who are different is one of the chief reasons why I love to ride the bus.

It's really easy to go through life only mixing with people who are like me. If my mission in life is to do whatever makes me comfortable, then hanging with my own peeps would be plenty for me. But I'm not on my own life mission. I'm on mission for God, and He's much more likely to put opportunities in my path if I take the path where a wide variety of people are traveling.

Even when I don't interact with people on the bus (a lot of bus riders value their privacy a great deal), I'm learning to understand more about the world and about people who live a different life than I do. Traveling the same road on the same bus with so many unique people reminds me that we're all headed in the same direction.

We're all on one road, a road laid out by God. We just have a lot of different ways of traveling that road.