Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Close Calls and Tragically Devastating News

It seems I have been doing almost nothing but running for transit this past week, starting from Friday.  I had to make it out to Port Credit.  I didn't really want to be on the very last train, prior to the meeting, since I thought it would be cutting it too close.  In the end, I managed to have almost 10 minutes before the morning train, and it wasn't crowded, which was nice.

On the way back, however, things were far too tight.  The event ended at 4:00, and there was a train out of Port Credit at 4:11, but the next one wasn't until 4:40.  I might have still met my friend at 6 on that later train, but it would have been a fairly close call.  As it was, a small group of us went speed-walking back to the station, since the typical time to the station was 15 minutes!  As we turned the corner, we saw that the train was actually sitting on the tracks (apparently it had gotten in early).  I told them not to wait for me, and they sprinted off.  I did my best to run, but I am just not in very good shape.  I sort of stumbled into the station and ran up the stairs.  It looks as though I was the very last person boarding at that station (and for that matter I think the train left a couple of minutes late).  I had a bottle of water on me, which is quite rare, but I definitely needed it then.  The rest of the evening went fairly smoothly.

Sat. I had some work to do, and in the end, I managed to make the 2:05 showing of High Rise with about 3 minutes to spare.  Then I went over to work, since there was an awkward gap until the Tafelmusik concert.  Somehow I had forgotten that they were at the Koerner Centre, and this threw me for a loop, since I had wanted to try to sell off a few books at BMW.  In the end, I went to the smaller BMW near the Eaton Centre, but that meant I walked from Union Station to the Eaton Centre and then ultimately up to St. George station (none of which would have been necessary if the TTC had timed transfers like the vast majority of transit agencies).  My feel were quite sore and in the end I turned up about 5 minutes before the concert.  This pattern was starting to get a little old already.

Sunday, I took my daughter to work.  While we didn't have any specific time to get there, we saw a bus turn the corner and sprinted for that, since the next one was at least 10 minutes away.  So that was a bit annoying.  Finally, on the way back, there was some huge gap in service and the next bus leaving the station was 16 minutes away, so we walked from the station to home.  So transit just was not my friend all weekend.  (I didn't go anywhere on Monday and finally did some weeding and gardening.)

Of course, in the scheme of things, these are all minor annoyances (unless one slips while running to catch the train, as I have seen happen to a few people).  It was all over the news yesterday that the lead singer of The Tragically Hip has incurable brain cancer.  It isn't clear how long he actually has -- a year or even longer -- but the Hip have decided to go out with one last concert tour.  I probably wouldn't have gone, since the Fully Completely tour was pretty great and I am generally losing my interest in rock concerts.  But the situation is different now.  Assuming they do a few nights in Toronto (so tickets aren't ridiculously hard to come by), I'll probably go.  It will be terrible after he is gone and the band breaks up.  It actually feels pretty morbid to be thinking of someone in the past tense while they are still around, but that's sort of how it goes with these things.  Anyway, here's hoping the cancer goes into remission and he has a solid run for a few more years at least. 


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