A Provincial Life 6

Living a provincial life in terms of travel means…

• October means Halloween, Halloween means corn mazes for folks in my area (as I assume it does for much of the country.) I love them. In the past, I’ve had to drive anywhere from ½ hour to an hour to reach one. Now, I only need to drive 10 minutes to get to one.
• My local airport is also convenient, another example of a 10-15 minute drive. I can park in its long-term parking lot for $5 a day, and the walk from my car to the terminal is under 5 minutes. I've been known to comment on the irony that the airport is what I love most about living here, because the airport makes getting out of town so convenient. Of course, that convenience is somewhat offset when I remember my final destinations are almost always one or two connections away rather than direct flights, and the connections add a few hours to my overall travel time.
• We have trains, we do. Not light-rail ones or commuter lines. We have one Amtrak passenger line. It passes through our provincial town in the middle of the night. (The depot’s station hours are midnight-8.00 a.m.) We also have a rather constant stream of freight trains running right through the downtown area. Very picturesque. One of the old depots is now a Senior Activities Center.
• Whoo-hoo! We continue to have bus service within my region, even though Greyhound pulled out of the state last year.
• Lots of people bike to work and other destinations. No, the reason isn’t because we’re a health-conscious community. No, it’s not because the city is well-designed for bicyclists or even pedestrians. It’s because there’s a fair amount of underpaid workers whose primary modes of transportation are the city’s limited mass transportation options, their feet, or bicycling.