Last week I had to urgently swap a faulty PC from a Northcote School with a replacement one from an Albany supplier, then I got an urgent call to an Epsom school that evening.

By car, it was easy to swap the PC but then I got stuck in very bad traffic getting to the Epsom school, which happens to be quite close to Boston Rd Station.
If it weren’t for the car, I would have lost about 30 minutes having to go from Northcote to town to pick up a CityHop car, return to Northcote, pick up a faulty PC, return it to a supplier in Albany to swap. But, keeping the car to get back to town, by dropping the hire car back off at downtown and shooting up on the train to the Epsom callout I would have got that time back instead of getting stuck in the start of CBD peak traffic.

It’ll be interesting to see how the net gains and losses pan out during November.

Yesterday also involved two return trips to the North Shore, both in traffic.

I’ve figured that to do everything I did yesterday, a train into town plus the hire car again would not have saved any time but would have been far less stressful. The bulk of the traffic was south of the Bridge. I would have used the hire car just for the Shore part of the second trip.

So I need to try to figure out ways to use time better. I’m hoping time on the bus, or train, when they’re not too crowded, could be used to do some admin work on the laptop. This would be better than time behind the wheel where one must 100% concentrate on driving. (Jarbury, could this be a new twist on a time savings benefit?)

I’m also looking forward to the odd trip home on the ferry after stressful days on the Shore.

And of course, walking would be light exercise time. I might get a pedometer to see how much walking I end up doing.