I only had a meeting this afternoon up on campus, so I figured it was the perfect chance to ride my bike to campus. I scrawled down a thousand turn-by-turns from the googleymaps, shoved the piece of paper in my bra, and pushed off down the hill on another new route. I took a wrong turn here and a wrong turn there, but eventually I was on Lafayette and going the right way and once I hit Monroe, I knew what to do (right, left, wave, right, coast, pedal, pedal pedal, pant, pant pant). The sun was out and I was pedaling and saying my how-you-doins and feeling good until I got to the part in the directions that sent me around Arbutus. I was maybe a mile and half from row after row of rowhouses on streets that make sense, but the suburbs are built to be hard to get into, and it worked. I finally made that last right into campus–yay! I will find a good route, and I will get in shape enough to make it with energy left over. I decided to take the bus part of the way home so that I could figure out how to take the bike on the bus. I was oddly anxious about it, being the sort who never wants to make other people wait whilst I rummage around trying to do stuff, but I want more transportation options. I mean, what if I could ride to school, but take the bus home when it starts getting dark early, or the snow starts falling?  I waited and waited and waited for the bus, watched a how-to-put-your-bike-on-the-bus video on my smartyphone (thank you, State of Maine!), and when the bus finally showed up, I followed the directions and got my bike on there with little fanfare so I could start worrying it would bounce off the bus and get run over, but that didn’t happen and then I was downtown and back on my easy ride home up Guilford Avenue. Easy peasy, and slowly but surely, I’m finding my way around. In a car, I might think neighborhoods I don’t live in are just here to get me to the freeway.