I was away from home all afternoon and for the better part of the evening today, from 3pm to 10:30pm. Besides bemoaning my local public transit system for turning what was a twenty-minute trip by car into an hourlong trip, I then calculated how long I would be traveling on my evening outing and wondered if more time would be spent on the bus or train than actually out and about.
While approaching my front step, I concluded that the answer was no. However, this brings up an interesting question: at what point does the travel make the outing not worth the effort? If you’re driving, certainly you can’t get too many other things done while driving. Yes, there is a laptop desk for a steering wheel, but for humanity’s sake, please don’t use it. However, on a bus or train I can actually do many things: read, write, edit, knit (this assumes I have something to knit), the list goes on. That’s certainly a perk, but where do those perks end? Variables include desire to go to event, ability to do other things while traveling, length of travel time, and length of event.