Public transportation

Public transportation in St. Augustine comes in two forms: for the tourists and for the locals. The tourist bus is part of the downtown tour and costs $17.00 a day. The locals ride the Sunshine Bus - or as we called it, the 'yellow' bus and you could ride all day for only $3.00.  We rode the yellow bus! I love buses!

One of my earliest and best memory includes a bus. My Dad and I would sometimes take the city bus from our house in Greenbelt, MD to downtown DC for some business he had to complete. To this day, if I smell bus diesel exhaust, I am transported to a street lined with old Brownstone buildings - the bus pulling away, and me holding my Dad's hand - feeling safe, loved and full of anticipation of the day. But not all experiences with buses are positive.

For instance - school buses. Those experiences were awful. Where to sit? The potheads sat in the back - the uncool sat in the front; spit balls flying across the aisles. My daughter would go to great lengths to avoid the school bus. I once took a bus from Baton Rouge to Maryland because I couldn't afford airfare. That was an experience! At one point, someone even got on with a chicken in a cat crate. The St. Augustine Sunshine bus came close - but no chickens. It was a look into a slice of America I don't usually see.

At first we sat very still and kept to ourselves. We noticed the same riders everyday - most knew the driver's by name - and each other. They talked about the noisy neighbors upstairs, asked about allergies, talked about their jobs. Soon they were talking to us - telling us about good places to eat, where to find good deals. It was a community on wheels- a club - the Sunshine Bus club. It was a community we would have missed if we had been traveling by car.

Today we pointed our bike west for the first time on this trip, leaving the eastern coast behind - and are off to find more slices of America we usually don't see.

Ride on!