Getting to Atlanta from East Cobb County can be somewhat of a pain in the ass. Yesterday, I rode the Cobb County transit Route 10 bus downtown. (Note: this post probably only has a niche audience, and is mostly for my own benefit).

The 8-mile drive from my house to the Cumberland Mall transit station took 23 minutes. I arrived on time to catch the 8:15 bus that goes to Midtown, but was thwarted in my original attempt by CCT’s requirement for exact change. I had figured that, like MARTA, there would be convenient change machines at the stations. After a trip to Burger King where I offered the perky counter guy $20 for a $1.04 cup of coffee (note to Burger King: coffee isn’t supposed to have bubbles in it!), I made it back to catch the 8:43 bus. It ran as advertised, placing me at the MARTA Arts Station at 9:06 a.m.

There is likely somewhere along that line where I can catch the bus with slightly less driving, but for the sake of throwing as few variables into the equation as possible, I drove to where the bus was taking me the least distance yesterday. Without even trying out MARTA as I plan to today, I’m leaning toward sticking with the CCT bus. The MARTA station I’ll drive to today is surely further from my house and less convenient than the Cumberland transit station.

However, the snag to that is on my way home, I have to pay for a $1.75 MARTA token to get into the Arts Station as opposed to the CCT fare I paid on the way down. So… getting an all-I-can-ride pass for one still leaves me paying for the other. I’m thinking since I can get some use out of the MARTA buses and trains while I’m downtown that I might accept the free MARTA pass my employer is offering and just eat the $1.25 CCT toll. I only work in the office three days per week, so $3.75 isn’t that big a deal when I’m saving at least $100 per month on gasoline.

Today: drive to the Perimeter Mall MARTA station, take the heavy rail into town.

And if you’re curious how my first day on the job went, it was fine. There was lots and lots and lots of reading to do, and there’s more where that came from.