Three Rights Make a Left

This week I am in Orlando, Florida, and boy have things changed since I was here last with my wife and kids over 25 years ago.

I had a housing conference in Tampa last week, and unfortunately Lori could not go because she was scheduled to be the election judge at home so I decided to take my brother Shawn.

Shawn has a cognitive disability since birth, and he has never been to Disney World or to Disneyland for that matter. As you can imagine for a 54-yearold man with the mind of a child, going to Disney World was a pretty exciting prospect. Shawn has his own money, and I told him that he would have to pay for his own way and split expenses. As you can imagine he jumped at the chance.

Rather than give you an account of our trip, I wanted to share some useful information about traveling. I discovered that a smart phone is a very valuable tool to save money on transportation.

My intention was to take Uber to get around, and we did use them several times. However, it has become a lot more expensive lately. So I figured out how to save money by taking the bus. That is something Lori and I have done a lot traveling in Europe but not so much in the US.

The first thing to remember is only take the bus if you have plenty of time. If time gets short, you can always call an Uber or Lyft ride share car as a backup.

In Orlando, it only costs $2 each way or $16 for a 7-day pass. Our hotel was on International Drive, and the trolley is only $10 for a 5-day pass.

How Google Maps works taking the bus: (This will probably work just about anywhere.)

•First bring up google maps on your smartphone, then type in the address where you want to go.

•Second pick the route from the options that come up. It will include walking distance to the bus stop, bus numbers, and transfers.

•Once you pick your route, click start and you will get step-by-step direction to get you to your destination.

•You simply follow directions to walk to the bus stop; it will even tell you how long you have to get there before the bus is scheduled to arrive. Once there, it will give you updates if the next bus is late or even early.

•Once on the bus, you can follow your progress on Google Maps watching for where your next transfer is.

If you have to walk to the next bus stop, it will give you walking directions and when the next bus is scheduled to arrive. It is amazingly simple but with a few glitches. A couple of times, the bus we needed drove right past us without slowing down. On Sunday, we tried to take the bus to church but it never showed up, so we finally took an Uber. I attributed that to the fact that on the weekend busses may not follow the same schedule as they do on weekdays. After church, we walked to the bus stop and wound up spending the day exploring by bus before we went back to our hotel. At church, we learned that the greater Orlando area is 2.7 million people. It is a really big and spread-out metropolitan area.