Experiment....

Because I'm always up for a challenge (and don't seem to have enough of them with 5 children?), April has been declared "Public Transportation for a Month" Month.

The girls and I will be using the Metro System when we go to DC in June, and it got me thinking about out own local transportation...

*What if we use the busses for a month?
*Will it be cost effective for myself and 4 children to do our regular errands on the bus instead of driving?
*Who will we meet along the way?
*What lessons will we learn?

Certainly we will meet new and interesting people and have new experiences that would not have had if we had stayed in the comfort zone of our mini van.

We don't live in a large metropolis so pouring over incomplete schedules and non-funcioning websites has been quite the challenge as it is.

*Looking at the local bus system, I'm not finding all of the bus stops on the maps--I'm not sure where, from our home, the closest bus stop would be. When I find the closest bus stop, will that be the most time efficient to get to where I need to go?

*The website has all the niceties and interactive maps... but it doesn't function

*We took a field trip to the bus office yesterday. We picked up all of the paper schedules, but, I definitely think there are routes missing.  We DID, however meet a very nice lady that explained the fares to us, maybe she'll be equally helpful with figuring out these schedules.

*Already we are learning valuable lessons in efficiency, and I'm sure we have many more to learn.