Monday, January 31, 2011

Super helpful, honest

Transit is very helpful. They write facts on signs like 'Unloading only; board 150m South on highway.' That would be very helpful if I knew which way is South. Or where the highway is. Or an estimate of how far 150m is.

And when you're standing next to a Tim Hortons, cars whipping past, trying to read signs that may or may not be 150m away, clutching at your backpack with frozen fingers, you start to wonder why you ever got out of bed in the morning anyway.

It didn't snow--thank god--but I was cold. You know it's cold when you can feel the metal going through your ears from your pink drop earrings. Or at least I can. That cold.

Transit was super helpful when I phoned and they said to stay put: bus will be coming any minute, and then every seven minutes after that. Thanks, Transit! Seven minutes later, as I paced up and down the corner where one highway met another highway--yeah, that's where I am in the evenings--the bus did not come. Seven minutes later, it did not come. Forty five minutes, and thirteen various buses on different routes that mocked me as they sped by, later: the bus came. I could no longer feel my face.

On the bus, the driver was surprisingly talkative but also a tad evil as she didn't turn on the inside bus lights. That means that all the people on the bus were cast in shadows as we pretended not to survey each other. Disconcerting. I think the guy behind me pet my hair. Very disconcerting.

Thanks to the directions I'd lifted from the Transit site (see, helpful!), I got off at the right stop. Then I turned around. Then I turned around again 'cause golly, I could have sworn that GoogleMaps showed this street as being a whole lot homier. It was dark enough so that the streets were lit only by streetlamps. The area was partially under construction and partially plain creepy, but I was in luck: there were no street signs. Not a one.

This is the 2011. What street doesn't have proper signs?

This irked me so much that I strode through the half-lit streets with an attitude, becoming progressively more and more lost. How can there not be street signs!

I got to my destination--nearly two hours late. But, I would have been a whole lot later if it wasn't for those super helpful signs.

Thanks, Transit!

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