As a resident of suburbia, I’m used to getting around by car. However for the past three summer that I have been volunteering/interning at WPFW I have to love the Metro. One of the things I miss the most about London is the Underground. And while I have a driver’s license I have never owned a car. All this means is that while the majority of my fellow upperclassmen have control over how they get around Fredericksburg I am at the mercy of the FRED bus system for better and worse.
Generally speaking I have a love/hate relationship with public transport systems. I love them when they work and when they’re on time and get me where I need to go in a timely fashion. I hate them one when they fail to do any one of the above. This is why my love for the Underground is so odd. Most of the time I was in London it worked like a charm but on the other hand most weekends I was stranded in the semi-suburb where I was staying (though it’s more complicated than that.) I also understand that my admiration of the metro is odd because most residents of DC are more likely to moan about it than embrace it. But for me, with only a few exceptions, the Metro has worked.
On the other hand FRED and I seem to have a mutual disdain for each other. We’re like ex’s who broke up amicably – we put with each other but only to a point. While I have seen parts of Fredericksburg that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise I do wish sometimes that I could have just driven from Central Park back to my apartment without having to wait an hour for a bus. While all of the public transport systems I have ridden on have been dysfunctional* in one way or another, Fredericksburg’s system is perhaps the most dysfunctional of all of them. But who knows, maybe Boston** will prove even more dysfunctional.

*Really this all breaks down to my love of things what are dysfunctional. I don’t know love them all the time, but I do identify with inanimate but dysfunctional systems. It’s why I love WMWC so much – it’s incredibly dysfunctional but it does the job well enough that no one knows just how dysfunctional it is. The same can be said for all of the above examples. I just have a thing for dysfunction.
**Boston aka the place I’ll probably end up going to law school, unless Loyola LA surprises me and actually says yes instead of no or waitlist. But we shall see.