The joy of taking back roads to work

One of the joys of riding my scooter to work has been that I take back roads to work. My scooter will only go up to 50 miles per hour and that isn't fast enough to take four-lane highways for too long. So, the back roads are a compromise but also fun. And going the back way only adds about 5 minutes to my commute each way. Being "forced" to use the back roads has increased the enjoyment of my ride - until now.

School started this week. As I made the turn onto one of the longer parts of my ride, I found myself behind a school bus. Not only did it stop often, it seemed to take forever for the bus to start up again and then slowly accelerated until it was time to stop again. And it didn't turn off until we reached the town line. A section of road that normally took me about 5 minutes to ride took about 15 minutes! It seems like the school district could have either split the route between two buses (I'll admit that's inefficient) or the driver could have pulled over once or twice to let cars go around. It's hard to complain because I'm new to this section of road (at least at this time of day). This has probably been going on for years and, apparently, no one else is making a fuss about it. And the argument against me would be, "So what if you're 10 minutes late to work! Just leave earlier." They'll say this is an important task and any changes would just cost the school district money or safety.

Another argument would be that my children probably cause the same problem to other drivers when they take the bus. Well, that argument doesn't work because my wife home schools our children. When they wake up in the morning, they're at school. Maybe I should take the kids out near the road every morning and stop traffic for 10 minutes while we walk back a forth a few times. How long would that be allowed to go on?

Well, today I found a better way to solve the problem. I found a side road that allows me to bypass a large part of the road that the bus uses. I did get stuck behind the bus for one stop but then we reached the turn-off and I rode a parallel road and came out on the original road well ahead of the school bus. So, as long as the timing stays about the same, I think I've got this problem solved even if it adds a few more minutes to my commute.