December - Possibility of carpool

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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My travel time and cost problems were weighing on me therefore, I had put up posters hoping either students, staff or faculty might want to share a car seat with me. I had also placed ads in online carpool sites and on Craigslist.

I discovered earlier that only 2% of the student body came from my city. This cut down the odds of me finding a carpool considerably.

I did get one call from a member of the staff who lived not that far from me, but far enough for me to have to take public transit to her place, making whatever cost savings I was planning negligible. Anyway, she only left one message and did not return my phone calls.

Another student texted me asking how much I was charging for carpooling. I texted her back saying I was not the one with the car, I was looking for a person with a car. She texted me saying I should make that clear in my poster because it was very misleading. I texted her back saying that my poster clearly says in big bold letters, "I NEED A RIDE". She texted me back to relax and not be so snippy.

Then I got a third call from someone who sounded ideal. A furniture design student who lived only 2 blocks away from me, had practically the same hours as I did. When we met she turned out to be 27-years-old and good company for the half hour drive. She did want almost as much money as I was paying for the train but she explained that it cost her way more than the cost of the train for gas and parking, so I agreed.

And then a strange series of inexplicalbe, perhaps even unfortunate, events occurred. She told me she could not pick me up the next day because she had to take her mother to the doctor. Okay. I understand. But then she did not show up again the next day. I left messages on her phone, but no reply. I sent her an email, but nothing. This went on for 4 days. I'm thinking, has she been in an accident?

I decided to walk down to the furniture design section and try to see if any of her teachers or classmates knew where she was. Well, she was there, in class. She was surprised to see me, she said lost her cell phone and only got another one yesterday. She said she had not seen my email. I was relieved she was okay and we agreed to continue our journeying the next day.

But then I thought about it. Could she not find another phone to call me from, seeing that I was expecting her for 4 days? If she got her cell phone yesterday why did I have to go to the furniture section to find her? Oh well, not to be paranoid. She was coming by tomorrow again.

Tomorrow she picks me up and says that she won't be able to drive me home because of something or other for several days. The mornings are alright but evenings will now be unpredictable. This means the financial edge I have with this carpool will disappear because I will have to pay for single ride tickets on the train (much more expensive than the monthly pass). But this is going to be a short month so maybe it will be okay.

The next day I wait for her to pick me up at 8:00 as she is supposed to. 8:20 she is not there. I call her. No answer, I leave a message. I can't wait any longer, I have to get to the train by 8:50 to get to the College on time, and I should have left my home 10 minutes before to get that. I throw on my coat, heave on my backpack and dash out of the house. I have no hope of making the train, so I hail a cab to take me to the train station.

An hour or two later I check my cell phone for messages after class, and there is a message from her. Oops, she forgot to tell me she couldn't pick me up today.

Obviously this is not going to work out. Besides the normal chaos of trying to work out departure and return times, paying almost the same as the train fare, I am really questioning the dependability and sincerity of this person. I made it quite clear that if either she or I decided this was not going to work for us, for whatever reason, we would just say it wasn't going to work. No explanation was necessary. Just tell me if you don't want to do this anymore. She totally agreed.

But I don't know. Some people have a really hard time being direct and the passive/aggressive approach is easier. At any rate, my enthusiasm for this had died out. It appears that unless several people are involved in this carpool idea there is not much cost saving and regularity and dependability are essential.

So scratch the carpool idea.