I have a pretty cool work schedule: On Mondays, I don’t have to go to my office, and I get to spend the entire day working on personal writing projects. Today’s agenda: A morning coffee in Belltown with a new friend (hey, Cherie!), a few miscellaneous errands in NoDo (my new name for Belltown/SLU/Lower Queen Anne), and then an afternoon of writing at home.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and a stuffy nose but decided to brave the rain anyway. Would that I had just stayed home!

I was early for the coffee and so decided to use the extra time to stop at Nordy’s and pick up a recently tapped pair of boots. This meant a wet walk (balancing bus chick bag, paper shopping bag with fixed-up boots, and umbrella) back to 3rd Avenue; a soggy, steamy ride up to Belltown; and another wet walk (dodging puddles and traffic tsunamis) over to the appointed meeting place on 1st. After coffee, I stopped at a knitting store a few blocks south of the coffee shop. There, after purchasing a book of patterns for my mother (though not a bus rider, my mom is a hardcore practitioner of the new “it” bus pastime), I exchanged my soggy and rapidly disintegrating Nordstrom shopping bag for one of theirs (also paper) and then hoofed it the four and a half blocks to the nearest (shelterless) 28 stop. At this point, I called Bus Nerd (balancing the bus chick bag, new soggy paper bag, umbrella, and phone) to find out the exact address of the projector repair place I was headed to. Fifteen minutes later, the 28 came. (It was on time; I had just neglected to check the schedule in advance.) The windows on the 28 were so fogged up that I missed my stop and had to walk two wet blocks back to the repair shop. Then, it was another four-and-a-half block walk (wind whipping, cars splashing, bag ripping) to the 8 stop on Denny and Aurora. Four hours (and a couple of lifetimes) after I had left my house this morning, I finally arrived home.

I realize that this insanity was as much about bad weather and bad decisions as it was about buses, but daaaang. I spent too much time, got too little accomplished, and got a little too much exposure to the elements. At no point during the ordeal did I find myself wishing for a car. (Driving in the city in the rain and searching/paying for parking? I’ll pass.) I did, however, find myself wishing for summer (Oh August, how I miss you!), and maybe a train–anything with indoor stations and predictable schedules.