In the spirit of Curb Your Car Month and Mother’s Day we bring you a Route of the Month post from local writer (and bus rider) Laura B.:

Route of the Month: Route 10
The Route of Unique Gifts

None of the usual Mother’s Day presents appealed to me. Flowers and chocolates are unimaginative. Magazine subscription?–she already gets a zillion. Then it occurred to me: my three favorite spots for unusual gifts are all on one AATA route, the number 10 circling northeast Ypsilanti.

The number 10 leaves downtown Ypsi 15 minutes after each hour. To catch it from Ann Arbor, take a bus leaving the Ann Arbor station half past the previous hour. Since traffic often causes delays, particularly during rush hours on route 4, it’s best to ask the driver when boarding, “Could you hold the 10 for me in Ypsi”?

After leaving downtown Ypsi, the 10 cruises over the river and down Cross Street. As it turns onto Prospect, riders can debus to walk or bike east down Cross to south on Harris and the first gift stop, Ypsilanti’s well-loved Value World. Riders can also stay on the bus—it stops across the street from this thrift shop, after a trip down Forest and a loop through the township past Appleridge Park.

Value World on Michigan Avenue (debus at the CVS across the street at the stop just after the Kroger’s) boasts four huge racks of purses, ranging from totes to clutches and arranged by color.

On the prowl for possible gifts, I found an adorable appliquéd spring beige canvas purse, in perfect condition, for $2.70. Hmm, a gift certificate to a restaurant could fit very nicely inside. Nearby was a sturdy, elegant cast iron wine rack, also in perfect condition, for $4.24. I estimated the rack would cost up to $60 in a fancy boutique. Tuck in a few bottles of Michigan wine, I thought, to make another nice gift.

Hopping back on the 10 brings riders into Depot Town, where one jewelry hotspot is Silver Spoon Antiques at 27 E. Cross St. The shop specializes in pre-1960 jewelry, and arranges pieces according to color, making it easy to select a piece of jewelry according to the giftee’s favorite palette. The shop’s “amethyst” table is particularly striking, glowing with purple necklaces, brooches, bracelets, and rings. Silver Spoon also has a selection of fancy lacy hankies for around $3 each—another extra to tuck into my appliquéd purse.

Just down the street, Salt City Antiques features a collection of mini-shops under one roof. About 12 dealers offer everything from Fiestaware to antique signs. One striking object was a $22 recipe-book holder with two metal balls suspended from the top back rail of the rack. Laid over each opened side of the book, the balls gently hold it open without fuss.

One short ride on route 10 had shown me wonderful ideas for gifts I’d never thought of. In addition to the fun of discovering unusual items, my Mother’s Day was covered.

Here’s another post from Deputy Editor Michael Betzold about riding the bus. He says that while this is a more critical piece, he fully supports riding the bus.

When you’re doing your bit for the environment but you’re thwarted by the very vehicle you’re using to do your bit, it can be frustrating.

I’m a big fan of the AATA. It’s a system that’s efficient, usually on time, well conceived, but badly underused. Most of the year, I use its wonderful bike racks to cut out the difficult uphill portion of my ride home. Unless I’m feeling energetic at the end of the work day, it’s just way too tempting to pop my bike on the bus and save myself two of the toughest of my five miles home. Partly the reason that it’s so tempting is that it’s not only convenient, but free. My employer, like most smart businesses downtown, provides me a Go! Pass, so I never have to pay for The Ride. And if it’s too snowy or wet a day for my bike commute (as it was a lot of times last winter), I still most often use the bus for my commute.

But here’s the rub: In the winter, aboard many AATA buses the heat is turned up so high it’s sweltering. You’re already bundled up against the cold, and that makes it doubly worse. I used to ride buses in Detroit, and I’m familiar with the Michigan culture’s reaction to winter: Crank the heat up high enough to make you sweat. It’s illogical though, and a waste.

It’s even worse in the summer. I mean, people do need to stay warm, but nobody needs to cool to icicle status. On almost every AATA bus I take during the summer the air-conditioning is at Arctic levels. Now Ann Arbor does have a handful, and sometimes two handfuls, of excessively hot days a year when using AC is reasonable, but it’s crazy for AC to be blasting on high every day for four or five months. The buses have windows. People can open them and catch a breeze.

It’s annoying to hop on the bus and feel like you’re at the mercy of an energy-hogging, out-of-control temperature-control system. With all the energy used for unnecessary AC and overheating on board the AATA buses, I’m sometimes uncertain if the environmental impact nets out as a positive. And I wonder: How can a city that is so forward-thinking on some of its energy and environmental buses condone this useless waste of energy? And how does AATA expect to attract more riders when its buses are sweltering in the winter and ice-cold in the summer?

It doesn’t make sense. Though it still makes a lot more sense than driving a car to work.

So Curb Your Car Month starts tomorrow. Yipee! It’s going to be really exciting.

I was asked by Concentrate (a new online magazine) to share some of my thoughts on Curb Your Car Month and public transit in general. How about that picture?
You can check out all of the blog posts here.