I work therefore I ride

For the most recent decade of my city dwellership (sure, look the word up, whatever), I have blithely accepted the horrors of rush hour driving as an inevitable part of the show. If you’re going to accept the joys and conveniences of the urban lifestyle, you must pay the price.

And part of the price is driving to and from work.

The logic, in the capable style of Aristotle, went something like this: I work in an office downtown; to get to and from said office downtown I must drive; therefore I drive.

For this is the vicious cycle of living in the city. Perhaps Alice Cooper put it best in the first verse of Lost in America: “I can't get a girl cuz I ain't got a car/I can't get a car cuz I ain't got a job/I can't get a job cuz I ain't got a car/So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car.”

I recommend listening to it at ear-shattering volume while driving through America with two teenaged boys, soon after being eyeballed out of town by the good folks of Metaline Falls, Wash. Although it goes without saying, you should sing along and bop your heads up and down.

But that could just be me. In any case that particular moment of pure fun may well have cost me the 2005 Parent of the Year Award. I even had the place cleared out on my mantle.

Whoops. Believe it or not, I digress.

Those not so reliant on their automobiles will recognize the faulty premise behind my driving decision. Indeed, there are other ways to get to and from work than hopping behind my very own steering wheel in my very own personal transportation-and-explosion-harnessing device.

Therefore, I don’t need to drive. (I am so sorry, Mr. Aristotle, for ruining a perfectly good syllogism. Can we still be friends?)

I could choose to ride a bike, walk, snowshoe, take a cab. We also have quite a few buses in Edmonton, as it turns out.

Most of them are headed to and from That Ginormous Mall. And, as fate would have it, I live partway between downtown and the mall. I can’t stand on my street for more than seven or eight minutes without meeting a bus that would gladly take me to work.

I also get a sweet deal on bus passes through my employer. Combine that with the tax advantages of using public transportation and the reduced wear-and-tear on my car, and, voila, no more excuses.

I now commute by bus.

As you probably suspect, the epidemic of Jackass: The Movie imitations earlier in the decade did wipe much of my readers’ slate clean. But those who did survive may recognize busing as a past subject for this space.

This time, my friends, I am a different type of bus rider. I am not some interloper, there for the crass purpose of laughing at my fellow human beings and finding column material. Oh no.

I am the chronic commuter. The instant old hand. I’m not taking the bus because of some temporary setback, such as a suspended driver’s licence, a broken transmission or university. Nope.

I am here by choice. And I want nothing – nothing, I tell you – to do with the other nearby lifeforms and their chubby thighs, their smelly armpits and their annoying mobile electronic devices.

Into my seat I plop and out of my briefcase arises a book. Between its pages goes my nose. I get a guaranteed half hour to an hour of reading done every day. Commuting is my time, now, not some frustrating extension of work.

Cyclones of squealing, tittering teens? They get nothing more than a disapproving glance. The standing, swaying person whose backpack clunks me on the side of the head? He barely breaks my concentration.

Loud natterers, cursing drunks, gum-snapping textaholics? Your annoying habits mean nothing to me.

Now, this is not as easy as I make it sound. I am by nature a man of the people. I tend to blend in and chat, whether stuck with a group of minor acquaintances, trapped in an airport, or shanghaied into a schmoozing session with politicians and other undesirables.

But not on the bus. To be the reader, you must adopt an air of superiority. After all, you know how to read. And, more important, you want to read. You did not choose this lonely pursuit out of boredom. You chose it to become even smarter and more knowledgeable than the riffraff around you.

If anything, you are a calming influence on everyone else. It’s almost like you work for the transit authority.

One bus driver was so frustrated about people not moving to the back, he said, “OK, I can wait all day,” and he left. Literally left.

He didn’t go far, of course. He stood outside, bathing in anger at the stupidity of the masses, and he waited.

As a book reader, I sympathized. I dragged my mind from a particularly riveting passage in Andre Agassi’s Open and boomed, “Move! To the back! Of the bus!”

Yes, the book-reading man spoke and the regular folk listened. The standers crammed themselves deeper and deeper into the bus. The driver returned.

You’re welcome, Edmonton Transit, I muttered to myself. And then I buried my nose back where it belonged.

George Lee lives, writes, edits and, contrary to evidence suggesting otherwise, reads in Edmonton. He even reads emails. Reach him at piecesofgeorge@featureswest.com.