Normally, I'm a suburban guy all the way: one wife, two cars, three credit cards.

But when I get on the bus, as is happening more and more these days, something different happens: I join a group of urban dwellers thrown together in a community like no other.

Suddenly, I'm Metro Man.

My wife got me restarted on the bus a few months ago when a gallon of gas started costing almost as much as a half-gallon of milk in Hawai'i. Worried that my beer-drinking fund might be tapped dry by the need for another kind of fuel, she slipped out to 7-Eleven one evening, bought a monthly pass and started using it even before I realized why her '99 Mustang was still in the carport each morning when I left for work.

(Pop math quiz: If we pay $30 a week for gasoline and an adult pass costs $40 per month, how many six-packs of Heineken at $9.99 can we buy each week with the savings?)

Eventually, her pre-dawn departures, which turned a 25-minute car ride into a 90-minute, two-bus commute, aroused a certain amount of guilt as I lay in bed alone listening to NPR's "Morning Edition," and I volunteered to ride the bus, too.

Then I discovered something surprising: Mikey likes it.

Riding the bus, it turns out, has all sorts of unexpected benefits. I get 30 minutes of walking exercise between home, work and the bus stop. I get an extra hour's reading-and-riding time built into my regular schedule. I actually get to enjoy the spectacular view as the No. 57 heads up the Pali each morning instead of keeping my eyes on the road. I don't get to listen to Perry & Price anymore.

Those are just private pleasures, though. It's the communal experience that I enjoy even more.

Oddly, on the bus we're a community of individualists, lost in our books, our iPods, our naps or simply our own blank stares. Rarely do we talk to one another or even acknowledge the presence of the person we're sitting next to. We know we're all going to go our own way, so there's little need to get involved.

Even so, there's a sense that we're all in this together, moving at the same speed for a little while, part of an organic system. We're part of the great urban economic dynamo that keeps Honolulu whirring. We see something of ourselves in a lot of our fellow passengers, even the ones who smell bad and talk too loudly on their cell phones. It's a realization that you just can't get riding alone in your car with the air conditioning and CD turned up high.

The bus: A metaphor for modern life. Who knew?

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.