For those of you unfamiliar with Southern Private University, it is composed of two campuses, East Privilege and West Privilege. During the regular school year, shuttle buses run directly between the two every five minutes. However, during the summer these buses are replaced by one that travels a circuitous route through Central Privilege every half hour or so. It even doubles back on itself on several occasions. Even with an i-Pod to calm my rage, I find this to be a deeply frustrating experience. What was once a twenty minute journey from my house to West Privilege can take as much as an hour if I miss the bus.

As I’m currently doing some Lifestyle Coaching on West Privilege, and as this new asswich bus schedule has just started, I decided to dust off my bike. Shockingly, after a couple of years in a dusty closet, it still works perfectly. The tires even hold air and everything. I hadn’t used it since I was last carless. In fact, traditionally my car dies at the beginning of every summer, coinciding with the asswich bus schedule, 95 degree heat and 100% humidity. Thankfully, though, my car is currently still running (up to 50 mph, anyway). And fingers crossed it will continue to do so.

It turns out that commuting by bike when you have a car is much more fun than commuting when you’re carless. Although I enjoy biking very much, last time round I did so with an air of grudgefulness, muttering to myself about my dead car and all those motherfuckers who could afford cars when I could not. Yesterday, though, I had a great time biking in to work, knowing that I could have driven but simply didn’t want to. Or that I could have taken the asswich bus. Except that this was much faster: 15 minutes, door to door. And I arrived with a sweaty exercise high. Very cool.

Posted by B. W. Ventril in Miscellanea

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 at 9:06 am and is filed under Miscellanea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “Transportation Virtue”
dickumbrage says:

fifteen minutes?!? did you take Small Southern College Town Street or did you just go straight down Southern Private University’s Architectural Attraction Drive?

i don’t think that you made it clear how fucking impossible it is to park at SPU, at least if you need to be on West Privilege.

May 11th, 2005 at 10:23 am
holagatita says:

Did they get rid of the moderately priced summer parking passes because of the Ginormous Library Construction Project?

May 11th, 2005 at 10:34 am
B. W. Ventril says:

I take Southern Private University’s Architectural Attraction Drive. It was exactly 5 mins. from my house to East Privilege, and another ten to the bike rack in front of Entitlement Library.

And yes, let me just state for the record that it is absolutely impossible to park on or near West Privilege, even in the summer. When I take the bus over during the year, it’s a 5 min. drive to Korean Methodist Church, where I illicitly park, a 5 min. walk to the bus stop, 5 mins of waiting (usually) and another 5-10 mins for the bus ride.

If I try the same in the summer it’s 5 mins to park, 5 mins to the bus stop, 5-30 mins of waiting, and 15-20 mins for the actual bus ride.

Biking: exactly 15 minutes.

May 11th, 2005 at 10:35 am
dickumbrage says:

Actually, it is not at all illicit to park at Korean Methodist Church, provided you don’t use one of the reserved spaces. They tried to keep SPU types out at one point, but eventually recanted, being good Korean Methodists and all.

The current SPU parking situation has even caused some commentators to take to flights of furious fancy.

May 11th, 2005 at 11:07 am
B. W. Ventril says:

Looks like they do have the cheapo summer parking permits, but that you can’t park everywhere with them:

https://aux03.auxserv.duke.edu/Parking/faq/faqsummerinfo.htm

I think I’ll stick to biking.

May 11th, 2005 at 11:29 am
holagatita says:

Environmentalist self-righteousness should always trump thrift anyway.

May 11th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
B. W. Ventril says:

Can’t I be both self-righteous *and* thrifty?

May 11th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
very anonymous says:

hooray for biking to work! though i too work for SPU, my place of work is at Gentrified Tobacco Warehouse Annex. it takes me around 20 min. to get from home to GTWA, even though the distance is likely shorter than for Mr. BWV, due to an annoying number of traffic lights on the less scenic route through the downtown of Small Southern City.

but biking is indeed a delightful thing to do, serving both the thrifty and self-righteousl parts of me, though not so much the vain parts of me that dislike walking into GTWA all sweaty and crazy hair-dooed.

May 11th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
B. W. Ventril says:

May i suggest shaving your head? Works for me!

May 11th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
very anonymous says:

i totally knew you were going to say that.

i have pondered the idea, but please recall reference in previous post to vanity. however, there is a predictble formula for my vanity:

(a)(x/b)=y

where a= the activity, x=number of people who tell me ‘a’ would make me really hot, b=absurd or extreme factor, and y=liklihood that i will do ‘a’.

May 11th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
bean3 says:

Yes! Most people who get on the circuitous bus on East Privilege, stay on until West Privilege. Couldn’t they run just one little direct bus from EP to WP?

There’s also some illicit parking just off Architectural Attraction Drive, on Alexander, but you still must endure no less than 13 stops to get to West Privilege. I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s a way to cut through Lush Display of Extravagant Wealth Gardens to get off the bus before it doubles back…

May 12th, 2005 at 8:54 am
B. W. Ventril says:

You can also get off quite close to World’s Best Unless You Have No Health Insurance Medical Complex and, I think, cut through fairly close to Entitlement Library. Though I admit I haven’t tried this.

May 12th, 2005 at 9:13 am
Bear Left says:

For us alum of Southern Private University & former longtime resisdents of Small Southern City (now employed at the University of Football), this thread has made my week. Until last year, one could safely park on West Privilege without a permit, but now that everything’s gated, that’s no longer an option.

I went six years at SPU without a permit. I drove around Formerly Cool Southern College Town once & realized that there was absolutely no way off the grid, & poneyed up for a permit. Definitely miss the Korean Church on West Confederate Politician Avenue.

May 12th, 2005 at 11:26 am
B. W. Ventril says:

Oh, I didn’t realize the street was named after a confederate politician…

May 12th, 2005 at 11:35 am