Changing course

I've been considering the last two days about changing my route to & from work. It seems like with all things these days, in order to invoke change you must have two incentives.

I'm talking about changing my daily commute from how I do it now (by car) to how I should do it by light rail *cough*.

It came to light the other day that there's a stop next to my work on the Max Blue Line. Shockingly, my commute route wouldn't really change... I'd drive my usual route, but instead of continuing on I'd park and ride.

How much would it change my life? Well it would add up to 2 hours round trip to my commute causing me to have to wake up earlier and get home later. Despite that cost in time, I would be saving the environment from my car's nasty CO2 emissions and would save my car from the roughly 50 miles a day I put on it. The real incentive is that I'd be saving about $5 bucks a week in gas & expenses. That doesn't seem like much, but $5 bucks is $5 bucks and coupled with the fact that adding so much mileage to my car via commute takes away from potential mileage I could put on it later (as in save that mileage, gas, and $5 bucks for a trip to Oregon's beautiful beaches or a trip North to Seattle).

Alas... it'll be hard to give up my established route though the beautiful Portland Hills and fun winding roads if I do ride the max.

Regardless... this is all chatter & rubbish until I actually try it out. So perhaps starting next week I'll take a ride on the max and hope that riding the Yellow Line then the Blue line everyday for a week will make the World, Portland, and my life more Green :)

~J out