What's with the stink?

Some days I wonder if perfume/cologne is suppose to attract, repel or just cover up someones natural stink because they forgot to shower. Honestly people.

On the train this morning

I'm just chilling on the train, sort of spacing out, when this stink drifts my way snapping me out of the zombie trance I was in. Of course this stink in women form chooses to sit directly in front of me. Now it wasn't exactly a horrible smell, it's not like she forgot to shower all week or anything, but it was a very unpleasant chemical smell that no matter how long one is exposed to it they will never get used to it.

I was just grateful that there was not that long to go before reaching Union Station. Surely the day can't get much worse if I was actually grateful to be nearing Toronto. So anyhow, as we travel on towards work, the lady begins checking her appearance in the window and makes small alterations to her hair. Perhaps she kept forgetting she had done this as she repeated the hair alterations a few times before we reached our destination.

For the amount of times she checked her appearance I was thinking there was someone at the office she was trying to attract. I really wanted to tell her that it didn't matter how she looked because by the time she got within five feet of whoever she was trying to impress, that person would turn and run trying to escape the stink.

I am not going to miss...

Leaving the house at 6:35 AM and arriving work at 9:20 AM.

This may be the first instalment of many for what I am not going to miss while I am off tending to my kids. May I never need the GO train again after my leave ends.

To Dreamland and back

On the seemingly endless train ride home I generally try to sleep but very rarely do I ever achieve my goal. Thursday was an exception though. I had fallen into dreamland but it was far from peaceful. In my slumber I had totally lost track of time and had the scare of my life: I thought I missed my stop. That somehow I had slept through my stop (which includes 15 minutes of sitting idle) and was heading back into the City. While still mostly asleep I realized the noise on the train was too loud for me to have missed my stop. That conclusion only lead to an even worse thought: my work day was just beginning and had not just ended. In a panic I jerked awake to get my bearings and put my mind at ease. Unfortunately, once I realized where I was and which direction I was heading, I was unable to fall back to sleep.

After that incident maybe it is best that I don’t fall asleep on the train. It would be a lot easier on my heart anyhow.

Stupid Is In The Air

Not sure what is special about today but there seems to be an unusually high amount of stupid people out there today. First off, a lady about a third my size decided to walk into my path needlessly (she angled into it from a safer position) and had she not taken evasive actions right away, it might have been ugly. Secondly, a few minutes later as I was exiting a building and heading down some stairs, another lady walked straight into my path. I moved to avoid her and she countered by moving in front of me again. I so wanted to continue on my path and send her back down the stairs but instead I veered to avoid this idiot. Lastly, a lady, walking on the sidewalk, stopped to allow a car to turn into a parking garage. If that was not stupid enough on its own, there was no one around her; the car would have been able to turn once she passed by.

Today is going to be one of those days.

Day and Night

I don't know what happens during the day but there is a huge difference in people on the long train ride home than on the ride in. Perhaps people get up on the wrong side of the bed every morning or maybe their tiny little brains don't function so early but the commute in to work is generally worse than the ride home (and that is saying a lot because the train ride is never a treat). I would deduce that I am the cause of my morning troubles if the ride home was as inane but since the ride home is vastly different, at the very least it is sufferable, my morning troubles are obviously a result of external factors.

I take the better of the two predicaments and sit against the side of the train, taking up as little space as a three hundred pound man can (I figure dealing with one person is less annoying than being bumped, elbowed, etc by people walking by). Inevitably the person who sits beside me has never met courtesy and snuggles up next to me (I barely get that close to my wife) and opens up a paper, flailing their elbows all the while. Being in cramped quarters the occasional elbow is somewhat understandable but generally the elbows fly all ride long. That isn’t the worst of it though. Like this morning, some people get aggressive and put some force behind the ‘bows as if I can magically make the wall beside me disappear and move over to give everyone the space they want.

It is never like that on the ride home and I generally take up more space going home. Even with taking up more space I receive far less elbows and bumps than I do in the mornings. Make sense to anyone else? Didn’t think so. There is the odd time when I get a ride full of elbows on the way home but those ‘bows are generally benign. Still annoying but it doesn’t reach irritating levels. The main irritant on the ride home is the noise but thankfully the iPod comes with volume control so that is not generally a huge concern.

I wish I lived in science fiction and could just 'beam' into work or perhaps use spells on people to make my commute more tolerable like in the tales of fantasy. The life of an Aes Sedai as created by the late Robert Jordan seems like a great life sometimes. (For those unfamiliar with Aes Sedai and are interested in the fantasy genre, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series is well worth the read).

Waiting

The commute in to work today went fairly well today until we approached Union Station and the train slowed and agonizingly inched forward. Impatient to get off the train (not so much to get to work though) this ten minutes felt like an eternity. Whenever you have a machine that is capable of high speeds go slower than an easy jog, time always seems to stand still.

Wanting to see what the delay was all about I scoped out the scene and saw nothing. That's right, all the tracks inside Union Station were abandoned. Nary a soul was stirring, at least on the side I was looking at, the side with all but three tracks on it. After straining my neck some, I saw our predicament. There was a train on our track. So we waited outside of Union while the other tracks sat empty. They did eventually fill up, some even emptying again, while we waited but that didn't make me feel any better about the situation. Finally, our number was called, "Seinfeld table for four", and our workday began.

Early Christmas Presents

Today I got two early Christmas presents from GO transit. 1. The train was at the station waiting when I got there and ran on time; and 2. the parking lot at the train station was plowed. It is just sad that these two things have become so unexpected. Let's hope they give me a third present and get me home on time.

Despite the great gifts above, I am still waiting for one of my Christmas wishes to come true. Having Pierre McGuire not do the World Junior hockey championship broadcasts. When I hear his broadcasts the phrase 'beating a dead horse' comes to mind as he mentions a useless fact and then reiterates it for another ten minutes. Thankfully televisions come with a mute feature.

The Ants Go Marching 2 By 2...

Until they come to a set of doors or stairs that is.

Every day after work, us ants go marching towards Union Station and the train platforms on our way home. We cram through several sets of double doors and even climb some stairs, most with sufficient room for two. Seems like a pretty straight forward exercise doesn't it? Pretty mundane; not worth writing about. I would tend to agree but unfortunately, the double door system is too much for most to comprehend. People avoid the second door like it is death itself and create a needless bottle neck as they force their way through the single door.

When this occurs at the bottom of the stairs I can at least understand because the one door is generally propped open. People are lazy and go for the easiest choice. When this occurs at the top of the stairs, with both doors closed, it just floors me. Take last night for example. I was walking up the stairs with someone on my left as we approached the doors. Both were closed at the time but instead of opening the door on the left, this person chooses the one on the right for some unknown reason. I sure did laugh when this person walked into the door as I reached to open it instead only stopping it's progress. Of course it was unintentional.

My lesson here likely had as much affect on this person as my not slowing down when being cut off walking does to those tripping over my feet.

Get A Little Closer

I’m the type of person who values personal space. Being tall and, to put it mildly, slightly overweight, I take up a lot of space period. It is obvious to anyone who happens to glance my way. The size of my presence is likely even obvious from their peripheries too but lets not give too many people that kind of credit. Now that the stage is set with minimal sentences and all but this one not being a long, drawn out, run-on sentence, I will get to the story.

The morning of yesterday was cold, the hint of snow in the air but as of the start of this story, no flakes had fallen in the ‘Shwa, at least none that I knew of. I had found my way onto the train somehow and took a seat that I frequently occupy (I will not say my usual seat because I am in denial that I have a usual seat on the train) for the morning commute into the big city. Things were going as uneventful as ever, which is the way we like it, when I heard the end door swing open.

With my music already playing its sweet melodies in my ears and my nose in my book, I caught only a glimpse of the person, noticed that he was a fair size and dismissed him as I thought he would walk right on by. I was wrong. Such a small decision as to what seat would be best seemed too tough for this man on this morning. He twitched as if he was going to continue walking then hesitated. Next he looked as if he was going to sit in the foursome across the way from me but he balked there too. That was when I knew what he had decided, maybe even before he did.

You guessed it, he sat right beside me. Why else would I be writing this? Despite the car having more vacant seats then the Cable Box, once know as Skydome, during any Blue Jays game, this man, all six foot something and two hundred or so pounds of him, ignored the many other empty seats and sat right beside me. He seemed to keep his distance when he first sat down but just as I was thinking he was going to give me some space, he shifted closer to me; so close that I though he wanted to be my conjoined twin, connected at the shoulder. It just got worse from there but my arm is starting to remind me of the encounter so I must stop typing now.

Okay it wasn’t that bad but I did receive numerous elbows as he struggled to take his coat off. Why didn’t he take his coat off while he was standing up? you ask. As Kid Rock would say, only God knows why.

Irritants

It's election time in Canada again and that means campaing time! Time for the various party leaders to promise us the world in hopes that they be elected into office where they will get post election amnesia and forget the promises they made. Time for the leaders to call each other names and point out their parties faults and past mistakes as if their own party is innocent of all evils. Pictures of kids in a sandbox comes to mind....

And then there are those people who like to continually complain of the high gas prices. I bet they are the same people who spend $80+ per bottle of toilet water and then bathe in the stuff so rather than enticing others the chemicals attack the senses of those unfortunate enough to pass them in the hall or on the street. Did I forget to mention being stuck on a train with them too. That is even worse because there are no real alternatives. I guess changing seats is an option, if one could find one that isn't close to one of these chemical lovers. Speaking of change...

The platform numbers at Union Station changed over the weekend. There have been notices posted everywhere, including GO Transit's website, for the past few weeks so people knew the change was going to happen and gave the appearance of someone caring. Instead of them providing the new mapping (i.e. platofrm 1 will become platform x) they get to stand back and watch the confused faces of the commuters while they try to figure things out. It shouldn't be difficult since most trains will be leaving from the same track but they could have made things easier by not keeping the new numbering system a secret.

While I am on the subject of making things better, changes are greatly needed in the world of sports broadcasting. The use of ex-player/current player analysts needs to stop. In most cases there is no value added and in some cases (Pat Tabler, Darrin Fletcher, Rance Mullincks) it actually hurts the whole game experience. This past weekend as one of the MLB divisional series entered Game 3 with the one team down 0-2, an analyst was asked what the trailing team needed to do to win. Is that not obvious! Score more runs then the other team. Have everyone playing like they deserve to be in the postseason, perhaps. We don't need some slightly above average ball player from a team long out of the playoffs to tell us that.

Short Fuse Anyone?

Here’s one of those stories that should leave you shaking your head and shows you the true nature of the idiots that use public transit (I am not implying that everyone who uses public transit is an idiot, just to be clear on that).

Leaving the Oshawa GO station last night was horrendous. They are doing construction on the only street the station is accessible from and apparently the day had not ended for the work crews so the traffic was more reflective of the traffic on the DVP. It took several minutes longer to get out of the lot than normal much to the dismay of everyone (I was not impressed myself as I had an hour drive ahead and was tight for time as it was). For those who have not been to the Oshawa GO station (I envy you) it is on Bloor St and there is a short street on the east side of the station that mainly serves the lot. The street conveniently has four lanes, a right and left turn lane in each direction. I’m working on a diagram but I doubt I will get it done so just picture it in your head if you can.

The majority of cars that use the side street turn right onto the main road so the smooth flow of the left lane relies on courtesy of other drivers exiting the parking lot at the various exit points. Sometimes the left lane gets blocked and the cars have the option of going around the car. If the driver decides not to go around the offending car, they are usually still able to make their turn on the green light. Usually people are smart enough to realize this and wait patiently for their path to clear. Yesterday was not one of those days.

The car exiting the lot in front of me was unable to merge with the right lane traffic so it blocked the left lane where two cars were waiting. Once the light turned green I edged into the road, stopping well short of the blockage, and waited for the traffic to move. While waiting my eyes met with those of the driver of the first car in the left lane and she started shouting at me through her closed window. WTF! I was just sitting there waiting for traffic to move. I tried to illustrate that I didn’t have a clue what she was saying but that didn’t seem to work as she kept screaming. I tried to calm her down by using hand gestures one would use on a child when they get over excited but all that got me was the finger and a “fuck you”. I showed no indication of cutting in front of her in my attempt to merge into the right lane but after her assault on me I edged my car up some just to make her more irate. I think it worked.

On a side note: while waiting to enter the road a car coming from the main road practically stopped in front of me to pick up her wandering passenger. I really wonder what goes on in some people’s minds.

Anecdotal piece: This morning on the train I was zoning out while looking out the window of the train when we stopped at a station and some lady decides to sit in the four seat section I was sitting. The way she stuck her ass out it appeared she was going to sit in the seat across from me on the outside (I was on the inside) but instead of sitting down there she lead with her ass and wiggled her way into the seat directly opposite me. Now just picture that for a minute. A person sticks their ass out and, as if reaching for the cookie jar that mommy has cleverly put just out of reach, extends themselves backwards towards a distant chair all the while shuffling their feet inch by inch until finally reaching their destination. It was both the oddest thing I witnessed and perhaps the funniest.

Driving Lesson 1 - Correction

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about driving.

I have come to realize it was I who had it all wrong when it came to stopping at stop lights and stop signs. I had fallen victim to the government propaganda of a calm and orderly society where rules are meant to be followed. I now know that stopping at stop signs is optional, done only when traffic is approaching from any direction. Stopping at stop lights is a little more complicated. If one is turning right, they must first stop, or at least slow down before turning regardless of approaching traffic. If one actually comes to a complete stop they must only wait a preset amount of time (based on their specific patience level) before completing the turn.

I apologize to anyone who actually put my earlier post into practice. It was based on information that one can ignore once they get their full license. Checking mirrors before changing lanes, signaling, and driving in the right lane except to pass are also items that one can forget once they get their full license too.
(Can you tell I'm bored at work?)

(Picture from The Post Standard off syracuse.com website)

Stupid Is As Stupid Does!

Well, I am sitting at work, practically bored to tears again so I thought I should write something to occupy my time. I re-thought my driving lessons series and decided to cancel them after the pilot episode. I didn’t find them very effective since last night some idiot decided a red light was not really meant for him and continued to turn his truck and the 80 foot flatbed trailer he was hauling behind him while I was going straight through an intersection on a very green light. Anyhow, I digress. Today I am going to write about some recent incidents that happened to me while walking from the train station to work, just to illustrate the degradation of society.

The first episode is perhaps the funniest and truly illustrates how stupid people are. (It would have fit in with my second driving lesson had I continued that poorly written series). Everything this day was as it usually is. I was disturbed from a dream by my alarm way to early in the morning, heck the birds weren’t even up yet; I spent an hour on the train having my sleep disrupted by elbows in my side every five minutes (the length of time it took the idiot beside my to look at the pictures in the paper); and I fought through a crowd of people way too eager to get to work just to get out of the station. Once I survived that, I was on my way to the office, walking as slow as I possibly could of course. A little jaywalking here, some alley hopping there, a jaunt through a parking lot or two and I’m at work. Seems pretty basic but on the day in question the unwritten rules of walking seemed too much for one unlucky individual and she ended up with a story to tell her colleagues.

I was approaching an intersection, walking on the right hand side of the sidewalk, (which, unless I missed a memo somewhere, is the appropriate side to be walking on, just like driving in North America) and noticed two women walking towards me. I stayed my line making it quite clear I was not going to move as I was walking where I should have been. The lady on my right noticed me and stepped further to my right and out of my path creating a gap for me to walk through. With that gap I had no need to take evasive actions and thought I would slip right through with no worries. Would you not think the same? It happens that way all the time and in fact, Hollywood makes fun of that type of occurrence a lot. The second women noticed me, thanks to her friends warning, and instead of walking straight or even taking a step to my left to ensure avoidance, this yahoo took a step to my right and ended up directly in my path. We met as she stepped onto the curb so the resulting collision knocked her backwards off the curb, arms flailing everywhere.

I sort of felt bad at first but as I got to thinking about it, I decided it was her own fault. She was the one who stepped into my path while her friend was smart enough to move. If I am walking on the wrong side of the road and see someone almost twice my size coming towards me with not indication they are going to deviate from their path, I make sure to give them a wide berth. I try not to get into that position in the first place but sometimes it’s unavoidable. By the time I crossed the other corner I was fighting back a bout of laughter.

Driving Lesson 1 - Approaching Intersections

It has become apparent as I drive the short distance from my house to the GO train station that people have forgotten what to do when approaching intersections. I'd like to share my knowledge and enilighten the ignorant.

Stop Lights:

When approaching an intersection one may come across a set of indicator lights. A red light at an intersection means stop. It's really that simple. For those who want to turn right on a red light, they may do so only when there are no cars approaching the intersection. This is really not rocket science, after all, they let 16 year olds get behind the wheel of vehicles.



Stop Signs:

When one approaches a stop sign they are to come to a complete stop (I believe the drivers handbook even says that one is required to wait three seconds after stopping before resuming). There is no such thing as a stoptional stop sign; drivers are required to stop at all stop signs.

There are various other little nuances with respect to stop signs but I don't want to cofuse anyone so I'll let this sink in before adding anything too complicated. This is the end of driving lesson 1, lesson 2 will be on multi-lane driving.

Eerie Coincidences

The past couple weeks I have been reading books written by Dean Koontz and today, I felt like I was living through them. In Phantoms, the book I am currently reading, a doctor returns with her teenage sister to her small ski village in California to find the entire town empty. An evil force killed and/or kidnapped everyone in the town. The doctor calls a neighbouring sheriff’s office and they send officers to investigate. After a quick search they set up a command post at the local sheriff’s office. While there the lights flicker, go out and the evil being manages to sneak in and drag an officer away without notice until the lights go back on. I did not do this justice at all; it is really a suspenseful read.

Anyhow, this morning a similar incident occurred to me, minus the evil force (thankfully) and the police and the setting for that matter. I was sitting on the noGO train on my way to work reading the above named book when the lights on the train flickered followed by the engine shutting down. While the engine was being worked on, the lights on the train flickered a few more times before they eventually went out completely. At 7:oo AM, the sun was still an hour or so from breaking through the darkness so nothing could be seen outside leaving everyone sitting on it vulnerable to anything lurking in the shadows. On most days this would be extremely annoying but since my mind threw the situation into the context of the book, I found it all fairly amusing and only slightly annoying. But that was not the end of the coincidences for the day.

Just before starting Phantoms, I had just finished Dragon Tears. In this book a person with supernatural powers works to cleanse the planet of undesirables by killing those who he considers a drain on the planet. At some point this evil person decides to put a hold on eliminating several victims so he can target a ‘hero cop’. The book itself was not too eerie but today when I unfolded our local newspaper, Oshawa This Week, the cover headline, ‘Hero cop rushes into burning home’, brought the book back into my mind. It did not help that events of the day had my mind thinking of some undesirables that the world would be better without. If this article appeared on any other day I likely wouldn’t have thought twice about it but given my experience this morning I can’t help but wonder if this is a case of life imitating art or if it is just a couple of eerie consequences.

To ease everyone’s curiosity, the article above described how Constable Bradley Browne of Durham Regional Police noticed smoke coming from a house while driving by and took immediate actions to ensure the safety of the residents, including running into the house to wake the residents and calling 911. He was off duty at the time.

Can You Believe It?

I received a couple emails from GO this afternoon. One saying "The 1653 train trip from Union to Oshawa (1738) is CANCELLED due to operational reasons (crew)" and another one apologizing for the delays yesterday and noted "Delays may continue into this evening. Because of yesterday evening's events, some train crew members have now exceeded federal regulations limiting the number of hours they can work. We will make every effort, along with CN, to avoid delays."

The smart thing would have been to cancel all service last night when there was an actual issue and save the crews for today. Instead they continued to try to run yesterday and had their crew sit idling in no man's land for countless hours wasting their hours. I am all for restricting hours for drivers of any vehicle (I've watched enough Seconds From Disaster shows on National Geographic channel), don't get me wrong, I just think GO Transit could have used their heads and planned more appropriately.

On the Rail to Nowhere

Yesterday us Eastbound commuters got yet another taste of how little customer service and intelligence GO Transit really has. I was working away at my desk, totally unaware that my bad day was about to get a lot worse, trying to get through my last hour. Just as I found something to occupy my remaining time with, an email notification pops up from GO Transit mentioning something about service suspension. I believe it said there was a major fire in the Victoria Park and Danforth area and all Lakeshore East service was suspended so find your own alternate trip home. Nice! Don’t bother to get buses arranged at Union or anything. Or give us some possible alternatives. This emergency preparedness on the part of GO shows just how much they care about their service. With this kind of attitude, people will look for permanent alternate travel plans and take their dollars elsewhere.

Anyhow, back to the story. After a few frantic seconds of thinking I was going to be stranded in Toronto for the night (the worst torture I can think of), I took a deep breath and came up with a plan to get myself home. I was going to take another train line and my mother agreed to pick me up. The only problem with this plan is that there was a good chance I was going to be late in picking up my son from daycare so when I got another email notification from GO saying the service had resumed I was ecstatic. Since no one was being that specific as to where this fire really was I was not expecting any hitches getting home.

I walked to Union and was able to get on a train going East and once the train pulled out of the station I called my mom and told her she was off the hook for the night. After a slow ride for about five or ten minutes, the train comes to a stop and there was an announcement saying we are waiting for some trains to go through and some signals and we would be on our way. About ten minutes later another announcement boomed through the speakers. There was a change of plans, the track has been closed by the fire chief and we were heading back to Union Station.

I called my mom once again and arranged for her to go to the daycare and I would meet them at home whenever I got there. After sitting in the same spot on the tracks for another fifteen minutes or so, a third announcement came on changing the plans for the third time. We are going to wait on the tracks in the middle of nowhere until the morons at GO Transit figure out what to do with us cattle.

After waiting for about another thirty minutes, and twenty minutes after I am usually home, the train was finally moving…East. At this time, I was extremely irritated by the indecision of GO Transit and that only intensified when we passed the fire area. They should never have resumed service on that line at all last night. The train crawled through the affected section mere inches beside some fire trucks parked on the rail grade. Firemen were only a few yards on the other side of the grade trying to extinguish the fire. Although, how they saw anything in that thick “toxic” haze of smoke I’ll never know. Someone could lose sight of their hand in it if they extended their arm out. All evening long, service was on again, off again until they finally stopped around 10 or 11.

This was the second incident this week for GO Transit as well. This most recent episode, although not started by GO Transit, was compounded by the lack of decision by GO. I would have much rather been anywhere but stuck on a train with no room to move around. This is just another example of how few options the train commuter has once on the train and how many outside factors can influence the fate of a commute home. With the fact that GO cannot keep their equipment running properly and their lack of customer service I don’t know why I am still using them. Maybe it’s time to start driving.

Letter re GO Transit

I have yet to actually send this letter to anyone and chances are good that I will never actually send this but here it is for your enjoyment anyhow. Feel free to recommend any changes and hopefully I will find someone to send this letter to and get it done. Once again I have proved that I am a thinker not a doer. I get these great(?) ideas but never act on them. Maybe someday I will change this but I won't be holding my breath for this to occur.

For years it has been the government’s objective to reduce carbon monoxide emissions from vehicles by promoting car pooling and public transportation. The Federal government has even gone so far as to give monthly commuters a tax break for their part in reducing harmful emissions (and as an incentive for others to start commuting). In the greater Toronto area, a lot of people work in downtown Toronto and rely heavily on GO Transit to get to and from work. For many of these commuters, any service disruption is not just an inconvenience but it results in lost income or added expenses to them while GO Transit escapes without having to reimburse these riders for the lack of service.

Infrequent delays are understandable and can be overlooked but riders should not have to accept frequent service disruptions like the ones during the period of June 4, 2007 to June 15, 2007. During that brief period there were daily delays and even some cancellations affecting almost all rail corridors GO Transit services. I understand that some of these disruptions were caused by events for which GO Transit had no control over (i.e. police investigations and inclement weather) but other disruptions were caused by events that GO Transit referred to as “equipment problems” (see attached email). GO Transit needs to be held accountable for service disruptions caused by the inadequate maintenance of their trains.

As much as public transit needs to be extended, the need to improve the services currently offered is greater. More needs to be done to try to ensure service schedules are followed and disruptions are kept to a minimum. I am asking you to investigate this situation and bring this topic to the attention of all others who can help. GO Transit riders are supporting the government’s green initiative and do not deserve to be taken advantage of. Please do what you can to ensure GO Transit is held accountable for avoidable service disruptions.

I’m Not a TTC Skidaddler

Don't forget your ticket when I open up the door-
Kindly make your way along the aisle
I'll drive ya down to work and I'll safely bring ya back
And I'll try to render service with a smile

Last night I decided to stay downtown to check out a Jays’ game and spend the night at my sister’s place in Toronto. The game was not very exciting but the night was rather enjoyable overall. This morning I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the TTC commuters. It was my luck, or so I thought, there was a downtown express bus that operated close to where I was. Sure it was an extra $2.25 but it was faster (not that I am in a big hurry to get to work or anything) and supposedly empty. Nice!

The three of us (my sister, her husband and I) made our way to the bus stop to wait for the bus. My sister, travelling the opposite way, had to connect to the subway to get to work so when her bus arrived, we said our goodbyes and she was off to work. The two of us who remained had another couple minutes until our bus was scheduled to arrive. Five minutes later the bus still had not arrived. Finally, fifteen minutes after the scheduled arrival time, the bus finally made it’s much anticipated appearance. Even though the bus was late it was still quite empty and despite the noise, the ride to work was not too painful and even with the late pickup, I still managed to arrive at work on time.

I think this experience solidifies the fact that public transit is not for me. The GO train has given me nothing but trouble and even the TTC seems to have a grudge against me. Maybe I am just expecting too much when I expect public transit to run on time and I should just be satisfied with the times I actually do get to work (or home) on time.

I'm a TTC Skidaddler yeah sockit to my big red rattler-
Ya sockit to my big red rattler

*Italics are lyrics from Stompin' Tom Connors song I'm A TTC Skiddadler