Local Bus System

This Wednesday, I got to try out the local bus system for the first time. As I mentioned in a previous post, I made the huge mistake of running the battery down on my Yamaha TMAX motorbike. I had no idea how complicated it is to jump start the battery on the bike. It turned out they would have to take the bike's mirrors off, the windshield and the front face plate in order to get to the small battery. This is obviously not something they can easily do on the street. So, my bike was loaded on a truck and taken to the motorcycle dealership where they ended up replacing the dead battery.

Heyser Cycle was as prompt as they could be in fixing the problem with my bike. I say that because right now, they are swamped with work. It's hot; it's sunny; gas is still nearly $4 a gallon so everyone wants to ride their motorbike. Which means, Heyser is loaded with work right now as of course a number of the pesky bikes don't want to run right while the weather is great for riding a motorbike.

2 days after I dropped my bike off at the dealership, they called me and told me it was ready for pick up. Cool. 1 problem, how do I get over there to pick it up? My good friends the Baldons have moved to Bowie. I wasn't about to call them and ask them to drive out to Laurel to get me and then drive me to the dealership. The people I know at work are what I would call semi-friends. We have great times chatting at work and, I am willing to help them out some at work but, I don't have anything to do with them outside work. So, I wasn't about to ask one of them for a ride. I could walk it but, it is over 9 miles to the dealership. I could call a cab but, I haven't forgotten the last fiasco I had with that. So, I looked into the local bus system. It turned out there is a Central Maryland bus system that runs through Laurel and connects with Anne Arundel and Howard County buses. This makes it pretty handy if you don't have access to a car.

The fares on the bus were very reasonable. It cost $1.50 to get to Laurel Mall. From there, I was able to walk the remaining 3 or 4 blocks to Heyser. My only complaint with the system is they didn't have a schedule posted at the bus stop saying when the bus would show up and, you couldn't find out the pick up times on-line either. So, I went out to bus stop and had no idea when the bus would show up. Because of this, I ended up waiting over 25 minutes at the stop in the heat. I wasn't thrilled but, it beat taking a taxi or worse still walking.

That's all on my first experience with the local Laurel, Maryland bus system. It's a decent enough system. It is affordable and, you can get to a lot of places on it with the connecting bus services such as Greenbelt Metro Station, Columbia Mall and Baltimore Washington International Airport. I'm tempted to try to take it to the airport sometime. I figure it would cost me $5 or so to get there vice $35 to use an airport shuttle. We'll see on that. Cheers all!