Item #39

Rant #39, January 29, 2004

Garr

Rambling

Why does Calgary Transit hate me? Why?! I was going to go see Sweeny Todd tonight, was supposed to meet Mrs. Collinson there between 6:30 and 6:45 to get my ticket. So I find out the bus and train times and figure out I'll probably end up at the Jubilee Auditorium at about 6:22.

I have to catch the bus at 6:00 to get there then, so I head outside at 5:55 to catch my bus. It usually takes about two minutes to get to the bus stop, and it took about that long today too. The difference between today and usually, in this case, was the fact that usually the bus shows up, and today it didn't.

So the bus doesn't show up at 6:00, I figure it's just running a little late and will be there soon. At 6:10 I decide it must have been early, but that's fine because I can catch the next one at 6:23. I left the bus stop at 6:30 grumbling to myself about the two busses I saw going to opposite direction with the ocassional "fuck" raising the volume of my voice for a moment.

The moment I get home I walk over to the phone and call my dad. 4 rings later his answering machine turns on and I hang up. I call again, 4 rings later... I hang up and tell my sister to check the bus times, just in case I'd had them wrong. Clear as decoded html it said there "6:00" and "6:23". I call my dad again but he's still not home.

And then the phone rings. I answer, thinking that maybe it's my dad and he somehow happened to call at that particular moment so I could get him to drive me because theres no way I'm going to get there on time on transit in only fifteen minutes. But instead it's my mum, who happens to be right where I'd like to be at that moment, the Safeway beside Sunnyside Station.

She tells me I should go out and wait for the bus. She was always the mother who would phone the bus company and ask where the school bus was when it didn't show up on time rather than just letting me stay home after thirty minutes outside on a stupid Calgary winter morning. She tells me to go wait for the bus in case one of the ones that didn't show up does. The next bus isn't supposed to show up until 6:48 but those numbers don't really mean much to me anymore, but being a mother she convinces me and I find myself hanging up the phone and marching out the door, pulling the gloves back onto hands that have only just begun to warm up again.

I wait at the bus stop for five minutes and behold a bus has arrived at 6:40, eight minutes before one is supposed to be there. At the train station now, ten minutes later I look at the stupid schedule Calgary Transit put up about a year ago that now contain absolutely no useful information to replace the ones that said when the trains were supposed to come and work out that a train might be there in about five minutes, but it took ten minutes for that train to arrive, in the mean time I got to watch two trains drive in the opposite direction.

I finally arrive at the Jubilee twenty-five or thirty minutes after I supposed to. I go to where I was supposed to mean Mrs. Collinson in the lobby and wait for a minute or two and then leave knowing that she and the rest of the people who were meeting there are already inside and I have no way of finding them. Back to SAIT/Jubilee/ACAD train station. Naturally a train comes within three minutes of my arrival there, and when I get the Safeway beside Sunnyside Station I wait for ten minutes inside the Safeway and a bus comes, presumably on time.

I arrive home, my mum's only response being "You should have explained to them..." Followed by a "People are understanding." I responded with a fitting, "No Mum, People are assholes" and I go downstairs and sit down at the computer.

Avatar image taken from the "Broken Miho" poster by Fred Gallagher (aka. Piro) and Kristen Perry (aka. Merekat)