The bus service that operates in Venice, Santa Monica and West LA (The Big Blue Bus) is cheap, frequent and as far as public transport goes pretty clean – very few games of “Guess the Liquid”. I live around five miles from work so it was a relatively short trip, perhaps 25 minutes, but still I’d forgotten what it was like to have a commute where you can read a book or magazine, or thanks to my MDA catchup on email, read news feeds and write blog posts.

When it came to socialising, shopping, laundry etc then I missed having a car more, though since I live in the heart of Santa Monica even this wasn’t too bad – more inconvenient than unmanageable. When you want to travel outside of Santa Monica though you need to switch to the LA Metro, which is quite a different experience to the Big Blue Bus.

I think I’ve caught the Metro three times; once into Hollywood and once to/from Union Station. Both outward trips were during rush hour and fine, if a little crowded and running late. Coming back was just horrific. Even from Union Station at 9pm on a Monday there were few buses to be seen, I think we had to wait almost 90 minutes to catch one. For the return journey from Hollywood I gave up after an hour and flagged down a cab instead

I like to believe that even though I have my car back I’ll still occasionally catch the bus to work, or perhaps even cycle from time to time. Of course, I know that I won’t. Until the next time my car is in the shop of course.