Retroactive: Feb 12th, 2007

I wrote this on my last birthday--and am still proud of it :)

February 12th, 2007:
Waiting for public transportation is a funny kinda thing. It's kinda like dating in a way.

Take Friday, for example: I kept trying to time my departures from work, school, home to coincide with the transit system. It never works. It doesn't matter what time the schedule says something will pull up in front of you, it never shows up on time. Sometimes you turn a corner to see it pulling away from your stop--sometimes you wait...and wait....and wait...and wait.

I waited at the corner of Queen and Woodbine for 35 minutes in the cold. It gave me a lot of time to think about the time I spend waiting.

Usually it's for something headed in the right direction--and usually, as I mentioned before, that something doesn't show up when expected. I stand on the sidewalk and watch car after car heading in the opposite direction, empty and inviting looking. I wonder where they're going and what will happen when they get there. Sometimes I have an irresistable urge to hop onto one just for the ride--so I do. When it gets where it's going, or I feel like getting off, I cross the street to try and get back in the direction I started travelling in in the first place. Then a packed car comes along, and I disregard it in favor of an emptier car further back--only to find that I should have pushed my way onto that car because it was going exactly where I want to be and the emptier car is a short turn. Then I wonder why I didn't work a little harder to get on that first car and stay on it.
Trying to plan in order to get to a busier intersection with more connections rarely works--usually I end up waiting on a corner, frustrated, while buses and streetcars go in every direction except for the ones I want them to.

And sometimes I wait for so long that I just think "fuck it" and start to walk. Without fail, when that happens, I see my car go whizzing past me when I'm halfway in between two stops.
Taxi?