The medium-sized city where I used to live had excellent bus service…or so my husband has told me. I have to take his word for it because in the twenty-one years I lived in that area I never stepped foot inside a single one of the city busses. I’m your typical American. I had a nice, shiny car with a heater that blasted heat in the winter, an air conditioner that blasted frigid air in the summer, and a stereo at my fingertips that blasted whatever kind of music I wanted blasted, whenever. Why would I ride the bus when I could travel everywhere in splendid, comfortable isolation?

As a child my sister and I often rode the bus to school, but that was quite straightforward, and all the kids in our neighbourhood did the same thing. It was all a part of the whole school experience, like cafeteria lunches and spelling bees, things which you get through so you can move on to the “real” world of being an adult – driving your own car, eating in real restaurants, and relying heavily on the spell check feature of Microsoft Word. Not riding the bus became one of the benchmarks of being a grown-up. It became the symbol of independence.

Not to say that once I reached adulthood I completely abandoned all busses forever.  The island of Oahu, in Hawaii, has excellent bus service, and it’s actually easier to take the city bus from downtown Waikiki out to Pearl Harbor or the Ala Moana Shopping Center than it is to try to navigate the maze of one way streets. It’s quite easy for a hapless driver unfamiliar with the area to drive in circles for an hour or more. I speak from personal experience on this one, so take my word for it.

Then there was the memorable trip to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, which is small enough that a bus can circumnavigate the island in less than an hour. One evening a group of us headed out from our hotel to travel part-way around the island to a restaurant where we wanted to have dinner. A couple of stops beyond our hotel a cheerful local man wearing shorts, flip-flops and a tropical shirt boarded the bus carrying a ukulele, and took the seat immediately behind the driver. He began strumming his ukulele and singing. Between songs he engaged the passengers in conversation like a friendly tour guide. Most of us were tourists, and he asked the usual questions about where we were from, where we were going. When we told him which restaurant we were planning to dine in that evening he said, “Oh, you’ll like it there. My cousin will be cooking for you tonight.”

A few ukulele-accompanied group sing-along songs later the bus stopped and the driver unaccountably got off. We watched, puzzled by such odd behaviour, wondering if he was going to come back or leave us stranded there at the side of the road. Stranger still, the man who had been entertaining us stowed away his ukulele and climbed into the driver’s seat. He was the bus driver coming on for the late night shift and had been killing time and enjoying the balmy evening until they reached the spot where the first driver’s shift ended. At least, I hope that was the case. Perhaps he was just a crazy guy who hi-jacked a bus one evening. Whatever the case may be, he deposited us safely outside our restaurant and wished us a merry evening before driving off into the starry tropical night.

The common thread of my adult bus experiences is that they have usually been while I was on a relaxed, easy-going vacation, without a care in the world, with warm island breezes soothing away all stress and anxieties, and with nothing even faintly resembling a time table needing to be adhered to. That, to me, was what busses were for. They existed outside the realm of everyday practicalities and ordinary day-to-day life. Not so in my new life as a pseudo-English woman, and that reality became all too apparent on my third day in this country.

I arrived in the UK on a Friday, so my husband had the weekend to help me get settled in and show me around the area before he had to be back at work on Monday. One of the first things I would need to do, he told me, would be take the bus from our village into the next town down the road to sign the tenancy agreement for our home at the estate agent’s office.

Panic surged within me at the very thought of a solo bus trip. I’d have to speak! People would know I was a foreigner! I’d have to count out money and I still didn’t know a 50p coin from a 20p coin without close examination. At the very core of my being the combined blood of all my car-loving American ancestors cried out that NO! I wanted a car! I wanted to drive there! Not the bus! Please not the bus! Anything but that!

My husband, who didn’t even own a car until shortly before we were married, spoke of this monumental solo bus journey in such matter-of-fact terms that I felt quite ashamed to be overwhelmed by my petty fears. For him riding trains and busses is just an ordinary way of life, a normal, acceptable, commonplace way to travel from point A to point B. He showed me where the stops were, where the estate agent office was, where the grocery store was. He made it all sound so simple and boring that I tried to quell my fears.

Monday morning came and found me bravely embarking on my task, walking the 0.7 mile from my front door to the bus stop on the main road and waiting for the number 55 to appear. A couple of people were there ahead of me, so when the bus arrived I was able to observe what they did, and the lingo they used. I discovered that what I would call a round trip bus ticket would here be termed a “return”, and a one way is called a “single”. The trip outbound was fairly straightforward. The 55 is a double-decker bus, but I was far too timid to climb into the upper deck, choosing to remain safely on the lower area with the mothers with prams and the grandmothers with wheeled shopping trolleys.

That first bus ride was one of quiet observation. Like the aliens in movies who visit Earth to learn our ways and blend in, I kept silent and tried to absorb the basic etiquette from my fellow passengers. I learned that there is a politeness I never expected. People wanting to board wait for all departing passengers to exit the bus. If someone tries to jump the gun before a slower, elderly person is off then the bus driver will tell him to wait. People also tend to take note of who was already at the stop before them, and then form the expected British queue in order of who has been waiting the longest. Perhaps this is more of a village thing than an English thing, since probably in a big city like London it’s every man for himself. In the villages and small towns, however, there is a certain level of kindness that took me by surprise. Nearly everyone thanks the driver with a “Cheers”, or a “Ta”, or a “Thanks” at the end of their journey, and when an elderly person or a mother herding small children climbs on board people move to give them the more accessible seats.

On that first day my bus journey was uneventful, except that on the way home I made the mistake of ringing the bell one stop too early. I realized my mistake as soon as the bus stopped, but was too abashed to admit it to the driver, and so disembarked. I was then forced to walk an extra half a mile farther home hauling five heavy bags of groceries, which grew heavier by the minute.

As a side note, I will say that my arm muscles are more defined now after six months of carrying heavy bags of groceries home on the bus than they were after working out in the gym on fancy equipment for nearly two years. It’s one of the ways I console myself when it’s hot, or it’s cold, or it’s pouring down rain and I’m slogging my way home from the bus stop once again.

Since that first bus ride it’s become quite a casual, commonplace thing for me to hop on the bus to go somewhere. I’ll take the bus down to the town where my husband works, have an espresso at the Café Nero, browse through the Waterstones Book Store, and then after my husband gets off work we’ll go shopping at the big Sainsbury’s and ride home together in the car.

I’m to the point now where I recognize some of the drivers, and they recognize me, and give me an extra smile or a nod when I board – the smile and nod reserved for one of the regulars.  They joke with me about buying out the town if my hands are laden with shopping bags. They commiserate about that nasty cold that’s going around if I’m coughing and looking miserable.

I’ve also overcome my timidity and now venture onto the upper deck. If you manage to snag one of the coveted front seats up there it’s almost as good as an amusement park ride. The trees alongside the road are all trimmed to form a funny, rectangular tunnel that the bus just fits through without scraping the branches. You can see over the hedgerows from the top, and it’s amazing the vistas that open up for you when riding along so high above the ground. From my lofty perch I’ve spied manor houses and quaint cottages hidden down narrow lanes, witnessed horses galloping across fields seemingly for the pure joy of speed, gazed in awe at rainbows where rain and sunshine collided, and peeked through the windows of houses in early evening after the lights are turned on within but before the curtains are drawn. Each is just a flash, and then it is gone, an ever-changing kaleidoscope of images that never cease to fill me with wonder.

Not long ago our car was in the shop for repairs, so my husband and I ended up riding the bus together for a couple of weekends. It was on those late night rides home from Swindon that I discovered a couple of things. First, riding in that prime front seat on the upper deck with your husband’s arm around your shoulders and the road in front of you lit only by the bus’s headlights is better than the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland. You almost feel like you’re flying. When he’s driving the car you can’t hold your husband’s hand and snuggle up next to him, so there are definitely some perks to riding the bus. And second, if one of you falls asleep and starts to snore the other one will be there to wake you up before you embarrass yourself or miss your stop.

And so I’m now a grown-up person who rides the bus on a regular basis – just one of millions of other people who do the very same thing. It really isn’t a big deal at all. Yet each time I do it’s a reminder of how much my life has changed in this past year. Sometimes it isn’t easy. Some days I long for the shiny red car I used to own and the ease of driving somewhere compared to walking through stormy weather to and from the bus stop. But this is my life now, and I wouldn’t go back for all the cars in California.

The wheels on the bus go round and round

Round and round, round and round

The wheels on the bus go round and round

All through the town