Intelligence.

[rivka]

On my first day of Psychological Appraisal II, in grad school, Professor Sines glared at us over his desk and ordered us to write down our personal definition of intelligence. I still remember mine: "the capacity to learn from experience and adapt to change."

Yesterday I got to the bus stop at almost the precise moment that the bus did. I had to run the last few steps. So I vaulted onto the bus, and then dug in my wallet for my $1.60 fare. Here's what I had: a single dollar bill, several twenties, and a change purse full of pennies.

"I'm going to have to get off at the next stop, because I don't have enough change for my fare," I told the driver. A couple of nearby people offered assistance - one dug through his pockets extensively and then handed me a nickel, and the other offered me change for a dollar. "I don't have a dollar to give you," I explained, "so I'm going to have to get off the bus and go get change." "Ah, just pay whatever you have," said the driver. So I gratefully put in my $1.05 and sat down.

At noon, I was happy to see that my change from buying lunch included precisely 60 cents in coins. No problem with the afternoon fare! I had my 60 cents right there. Here's what I didn't pay attention to: my lunch cost $4.40. I paid with a $20, because that was all I had. So I got back my handy 60 cents in change... and three $5 bills. I didn't realize that I didn't have a dollar bill for the rest of my fare until I arrived at the bus stop at the end of the day, just moments before the bus was due to arrive.

The brisk half-hour walk home was certainly good exercise.

So, this morning? After having had fare difficulties with two bus rides in a row? I left the house and started merrily on my way without remembering that I still just had fives and twenties for my fare. I had to go all the way back into the house and get more money from the change cup.

"The capacity to learn from experience," huh. Not doing so well there...

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

One of my friends-with-kids says that breast milk is made from brain cells. (g,d,&r)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Blerg.

Would a bus pass help? Does the bus system in Baltimore even sell them?

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

I don't even know how to drive, and I actually do love mass transit, but the whole fare/ticket/pass availability thing bites me in the ass MULTIPLE times. Usually it has something to do with the timing of payday vs. weekly pass availability vs. actually dragging the kid around to get change vs. finding tickets in my purse/winter coat/fall jacket/summer jacket/laundry.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i <3 you.

(hee hee. p.s. how much change do you have now?)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

20 cents in nickels and a metric buttload of pennies. But I'm about to go to lunch! Where I will insist upon singles and coins.

(Yay! Yay! kalmn <3s me!)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

(Yay! Yay! kalmn <3s me!)

always. just sometimes i don't mention it. ;)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Baltimore doesn't sell a monthly bus pass? Why in the world not? (Or do you simply don't use the bus enough to get full falue?)

B

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I don't use the bus often enough. I take 3-5 trips a week, and the passes are priced to only be of value if you take 10 trips per week or more.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. You want to price them for daily commuters, and not for anyone more infrequent than that.

B

[rivka.livejournal.com]

They keep promising that they're going to institute a smart card system. That will be fantastic, but I'm not holding my breath.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Pre-paid cards are so much easier. They're more common on subways than busses, though. But the infrastructure is expensive, and if it doesn't increase ridership why would the city pay for it?

B

/Fantastic/ indeed!

[ailbhe]

"Reading Buses" has a pre-pay smart card system - you can prepay cash, or a travelcard, on the same card. You can charge the card up with a new cash sum or travelcard on the buses, in theory,though actually drivers have difficulty with that. It's a good system though.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Want GAS?

I also don't use the bus often enough to get a bus pass. But I do use the bus frequently enough that having money in bus-fare-useful amounts is useful. So I have a bus-fare coin-purse that I carry with me at just about all times and at the beginning of every month I get a bunch of coins from the bank that I set aside for bus-fare and from that stash about twice a month I stock the coin purse with coins in appropriate-for-bus-fare proportions (no bills because my bus fare is only 90 cents). I do not use the money in the at-home stash or purse for anything else. And as a result I rarely find myself without bus-fare.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

They do sell one, but it's priced at the same price as 40 single-ride tickets ($64).

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

You know, that's an annoyance. You'd think they'd at least do a "buy 9 rides, get the tenth free!" but *noooo*, these are for *convenience* (and, of course, "if you lose your pass, you have to pay the fare for the rest of the week, muahahahaha!")

And... oh, never mind. That's one thing I've always hated about public transit.

[gtrout.livejournal.com]

Not so! Had you truly demonstrated an inability to learn from your experience, you would have repeated the same scene on the bus this morning. Or tried to, at any rate.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Right. It's not that we make fewer mistakes, it's that we make different mistakes.

B

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Whenever I forget enough change--um, I mean, if I were to hypothetically forget to have the right change available--for the bus, I apologize and ask the driver if it's OK to pay extra the next time I take the bus. I figure if it's on the same route on the same day, the farebox collection will come out to the right amount for the day.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

UW subsidizes bus passes and just deducts my share of the cost out of my paycheck. The pass itself is a sticker that I apply to my ID card. So what I do is forget my pass in a pants pocket once every six months or so, so that it gets run through the laundry and the stupid bus pass sticker gets washed off and I have to go down to the parking office (located well beyond the backside of nowhere) to humble myself and get a new sticker. And I have to remember to do that in the morning or at lunch because those darned UW parking bureaucrats get to close their office at 4:30, a good half hour before I get off work.

[ckd]

Despite the fact that I walk to work, I still get a combo (bus + subway) pass each month. It's probably not worth it, even though I only pay for half the cost, and that half is in pretax dollars. (I also get to pick it up at the front desk; I don't even have to go to the parking & transportation office.)

$71, I pay $35.50, call it 36 and discount that by 25% to make the numbers easy...$27 is 30 bus rides or just over 21 subway trips. The convenience factor is worth something, though.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Hah! That's no indicator of a lack of intelligence. *I* do stuff like that all the time.

What?

*WHAT*?

Why is everyone looking at me like I just said something incredibly stupid?

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

George Bernard Shaw. One of my favorite quotes is: “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.” I often ask; “What the hell was I thinking?” this is normaly Afters I did something totally assed up.

Bus change is one of my worst non thinking things to do.

[xopher-vh.livejournal.com]

And of course, you don't have anything else on your mind, especially when you're at home.

When things like this happen to me for a whole day, I like to blame the fact that Mercury is retrograde. (It is, until December 5 or so. Right now it's conjunct Mars, which makes matters worse, but never mind.) All things involving communication and transportation are messed up right now.

I'm SO glad I'm flying to Montreal during this period. Fun, huh?

No, I don't expect you to believe it. But you can use it! Instead of saying "wow, I just did something stupid," you can say "Mercury is retrograde," with the understanding that they mean the same thing.

Works for me.

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

You're doing better than the Fish and Wildlife Service; you figured out that things weren't working after a couple of days, while off the California coast, it's taking the feds quite a bit longer (http://www.livejournal.com/users/edschweppe/44204.html)...