It's true her daily round trip takes about 20 minutes longer by bus than it did when she drove her car from her home in Hillsborough to work at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.

Otherwise, Mitchell comes out way ahead by riding the bus.

Instead of 45 miles a day, she drives about 15 miles round-trip between home and a park-and-ride lot at Hillsborough's Triangle SportsPlex.

The savings on gas and tire rubber alone would roughly cover the bus fare -- but her bus ride doesn't cost her a dime. UNC is among several big Triangle employers that subsidize public transportation for their employees.

That parking spot hadn't been free. It cost $611 a year. Now relieved of that expense, Mitchell can afford a SportsPlex membership.

She stops at the health club two or three afternoons each week, after she steps off the bus.

"I work on the elliptical trainer or the stair-step machine," said Mitchell, 60, who works as a nurse at a UNC Hospitals clinic. "Or I lift some weights."

All these benefits would make it easy to put up with a dreary bus ride -- but her bus ride sounds like the sweetest part of the deal.

"I have a great group of people to ride with," people she had never known before, Mitchell said. "We've even had two retirement parties on the way home, complete with cupcakes!"

She doesn't sound like a commuter when she describes the weekday journey. She sounds like a tourist.

"It's stress-free. It's relaxing to watch the lovely countryside. We can watch the sun rise when we cross over Interstate 40 -- we've got a great view," she said.

"Sometimes I read. The other night, we traded information about financial issues."

Mitchell is one of about 90 riders each day who take the 24-passenger express buses that run about 12 hours a day between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. Sometimes every seat is filled, she says.

Before Orange Public Transportation and Triangle Transit Authority teamed up to provide the service two years ago, the county bus agency handled the job on its own, with only about 20 riders a day.

"The commuters love it," said Al Terry, Orange County's transportation director. The white buses carry campus workers south from their homes in Hillsborough, and they serve Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents who have business in the county seat.

Mitchell was eager to share her experience when she learned that Triangle leaders are considering proposals to extend new bus routes from work centers to other outlying towns -- from Pittsboro and Mebane to Wake Forest, Zebulon and Clayton.

"I encourage people to push for this service," Mitchell said. "Once you try it, nothing else makes sense."

The Special Transit Advisory Commission (www.transitblueprint.org/stac.shtml) is expected to make bus and rail recommendations by the end of February.

A Garmin GPS update

John Melling is still out $70 he spent on the 2008 database update for his Garmin Nuvi, a $480 GPS navigation gadget that rides on his dashboard. He was steamed when he discovered the new mapping database does not include a number of North Carolina bypasses and freeways -- some of which have been open to traffic since 2006.

Other Garmin customers profited after reading of Melling's misfortune. David Ayscue and Del Gallion decided the software update wasn't worth the money.

So did Mia Hawley.

"Reading your article is preventing me from buying the update I had in mind," Hawley said by e-mail. "So thinks for saving me $70!"

Meanwhile, Melling has received an apology from Garmin, and the promise of a free update when the next one is available.

Garmin pointed Melling to a place on its Web site where customers can inspect new mapping databases before they buy them -- to see if they're worth the money.

Check my Crosstown Traffic blog, at the address below, for a link to Garmin's "MapSource Map Viewer" and Garmin's obsolete image of the 540 Outer Loop.