From Point A to Point B

When you live in a small town in the United States, your options for getting around are pretty much limited to walking or driving a personal vehicle. Of course, this varies with the size of the town and basic infrastructure.  Owning a car is considered by many to be a necessity even if it is never driven farther than the local corner store to pick up beer and 'smokes'.

In Colorado, it is common to take a trip for shopping or Dr. appointments that can be as long are 3-5 hours one way.  Denver is the hub for all things medical; it's where the big hospitals, the teaching hospitals, and the majority of the rarer specialists are located.  Denver also has more malls than anywhere else, so it does bring in long-distance shoppers, especially around special occasions or holidays.

It is possible (and frequent) that on a long road trip you can go for an hour or more without passing more than trees, fences, an occasional house (in the middle of nowhere) and lots of cows and other wildlife, depending where you are at (deer, elk, antelope, mountain goats etc.).  Small towns start to get more frequent as you approach many cities and at the base of the mountain passes, it is often prudent to stop before making the drive up and over.  On trips that are made frequently you learn where all the best places are to stop for a quick top off of the tank, a boost of energy through a snack or drink, and most important where the last chances are to visit the loo for a more comfortable ride.  In Colorado, weather also factors into these plans, making a quick hour-long hop to the next town easily turn into an unpleasant trek that takes infinitely more time, and at night gives you the impression of jumping into warp speed as the snow flies towards your headlights.

When we moved here to Newcastle we knew we were not going to get a vehicle, and had no interest in learning to drive, especially because of the incredibly complicated roundabouts.  We are always impressed watching our Uber drivers manage the directions on their GPS (talking about 'taking the third left in the middle lane but tending to the right' and around the circle) and miraculously we come out where we are supposed to be.  Uber has been a lifesaver for those times that are either just awkward timing to get someplace on the bus network, or when travelling to and from the Central Station with enough luggage that juggling it on a bus would be difficult and walking there is not worth the stress.

My husband has become an expert at getting around by bus. My last experiences with riding busses were as a young teenager, too young to drive but wanting to explore the city with my best friend. Since then I've relied on getting places by car.  There are multiple companies that run buses that stop within a short walk of our flat.  The difficulty is figuring out which bus, heading which direction, and where the closest stop to our ultimate destination is going to be.  David relies on Google maps and their public transportation option to help figure out where and when to hop on and then counts down the stops to where we need to get off.  We do have a few routes that we have taken often enough that I've learned the landmarks to watch for and that let me know when I'm about to reach the final stop to disembark at.  Except for these main routes I am scared to death of getting on and heading the wrong direction or miscounting bus stops and ending up way off target.  For now these anxieties keep me from traveling alone but I will soon have some help in learning how to make the system work for me and not be scared to death of exploring the city apart from the areas around my flat.

I have a goal for early March to get from our flat to a local clinic where I will be attending some therapy groups.  It would be over an hour to walk there and the route seems quite complicated or I can take one of 3 bus routes to make it there in about 40 minutes and only 10 of those would be walking.  I know what I have to do, and will spend the month of February gaining confidence in getting from Point A to Point B.  If I get lost somewhere between here and there then it will be Uber to the rescue, and a dose of anti-anxiety meds while I wait.

When we travel further distances we hop aboard any one of the many trains that are heading in the right direction.  If we are heading far afield (like London, Liverpool, or Edinburgh) we will pre-purchase tickets and whenever possible choose seats that allow us to face the direction of travel (motion sickness from riding backward is not our friend).  For quick day trips we just purchase tickets at the station and since many of these trips are less than 30 minutes we are just fine if we can't find open seats and instead 'train surf' as my daughter called it.  Some of our trips to London have been amazingly quick, with less than half a dozen stops between here and there, while other trips seem much longer because we stop at every little town/city on the route.  Google Maps shows the distance between here in Newcastle and London as being right around 280 miles (450.6 kilometers) and taking about 5 hours to drive. Compare that to a trip we made frequently between Craig, CO, and Denver, CO, with a distance of 198 miles (318.65) and taking about 3 hours and 45 minutes to drive.  The biggest difference between the two is the number of towns you encounter along the way.  For the Colorado trip, there would be roughly 9 chances to stop, or at the very least a need to slow down for a short distance (this is not counting all the suburbs of Denver that some may claim are independent towns). Based on Google, there seem to be 15 places where the road travels through or very close to a town (again not counting all the suburbs of London). 

We've come from the land of everyone owns a car (or at least a majority) and considered having all the adults in the household capable of driving (even if just around our small town) as a necessity, and have now landed in the perfect spot that allows us to walk for most of our necessities. Instead, we've come to a place with a robust public transportation system.  So instead of firing up our TARDIS (the nickname for our blue Toyota) every time we wanted to go anywhere we can now hop on a bus (or train, or metro, or Uber) to get from Point A to Point B.

Cheers!