Why do people hate buses?

I was looking for pictures of the Highway 17 Express Bus for work today. I found many thousand photos with the label, but none of them were actually of the vehicle. I guess it isn't a sexy bus -- no one wants to post photos of it. I did find a photo of bikes on the bus on flickr incidentally posted by one of our favorite contributors of Velo Vogue.

Before I left for my trip around the world, I told a family friend "I don't do buses." She didn't let me forget that for years! She considered it a childish statement worth taunting. When I returned, having ridden buses, trains, planes, donkey carts, auto and cyclo rickshaws, bicycles and walked maybe thousands of miles, she puffed that I had "grown up so much." (This from a woman who hired a car and driver to take her around India, but don't get me started.) I do do buses now, but I don't like it.

I didn't like the experience of the ...company... bus with my former employer just because it was a bus on the highway. I did some miscalculations last week and ended up driving alone back and forth to work twice. I HATE being on the highway. The experience of it makes my neck ache. But is that the reason we hate buses so much?

I had a conference this week. A lot of people asked if I was doing bike planning. "No," I replied. "I'm all about buses these days." I believe in buses because I believe in people. But I can't help but wonder if they are just the socialist off-shoot of auto-supremacy. I mean, you do what you can with the existing system. Is it too much of a compromise?

Years ago, Grayson wanted to prove that "what is beautiful is good." The problem with his premise is that beauty is absolutely subjective. How then decide about the collective good? I love my job because it is both complicated and solvable... at least slightly solvable anyway... until the next big questions or trend comes along.

The conference had a session on blogging. You know I had to go. Some of my co-bloggers have complained about not having enough readers. I had lunch with a group of activist ladies. One said that she wasn't young enough to get into blogging. Knowing that I was about 10 years older, I said "I have more opinions than is really useful. Blogging helps me to get them out." I don't even care that I have 5 readers. Folks are invited to read or not. I blog for myself. I loved it when one of the guys in the session said blogging has "a bias towards you."

They influenced me to ask myself what's the angle of my drivel. Right now, I'm thinking: thirty-something, carfree, urban, single San Franciscan who thinks (and travels) too much. The specifics on my friends and life are probably what causes people who know me to return. But the positive feedback comes when I weave in the politics of my lifestyle.