On the Road – Phone Addicts, Pampered Poodles, Guard Pages and More
May 4, 2023
Highlights and lowlights from yesterday’s trek to and from the universe’s center:
1. Waiting at Fairview Mall for the GO bus was a young kid who looked not a day over 18 wearing a gray cap with “this is my drinking cap” stitched on it. Before boarding, he put $50 on his Presto card using an RBC Visa card that probably belonged to his parents.
2. The bus was kept waiting for an older woman who was driven to the stop only a minute or two before our scheduled departure time. With the help of the guy who drove her, she had to unload five bags from the car, haul them over to the bus, then pile them into the luggage compartment. The delay greatly annoyed the guy behind me wearing a brown leather jacket and sporting a long, white beard that Santa Claus would have been proud of who fell asleep soon after, only to wake himself up from his loud snoring. Later, as the driver pulled off onto Eastport Drive to dodge the congestion on the Burlington Skyway, he got on his phone and was asking someone when train service to St. Catharines would be resuming.
3. Seated across the aisle from me in the front row of the upper level was an Asian woman with her head back and snoozing. I’ve seen it before, but I continue to be amazed as to why people who obviously just want to use the travel time to catch up on some sleep make such an effort to get a seat in the front row.
4. A woman seated a few rows behind me who told us she just had her cataracts done first thought that we were on a small bus, then changed her mind and said it was a big bus. When disembarking at Stoney Creek, she spent several minutes with the driver asking him where the Walmart was. The same massive Walmart we passed by on the way into the bus loop. From the looks of things, she’s got much bigger problems with her eyesight than cataracts.
5. Dear driver of the white Subaru with license plate CXZM 762: It’s up to you, but you might want to reconsider the next time you decide to cut off a speeding double decker GO bus, as you did going through Grimsby. If the bus driver had been unable to stop for whatever reason, that wasn’t a battle you were going to win. Trust me.
6. Passing in the other direction near the Burlington Street Nikola Tesla Boulevard exit was a truck with “Thank you to all front line heroes” painted on the trailer. As I’ve heard it said, it’s much easier to convince yourself you’re a hero than to admit you’ve been complicit in the greatest fraud in human history.
7. A community resident bum passed out next to the Presto machine . . .
7a. I’ve been seeing a little too much riffraff at the Burlington station lately. It’s Burlington, not Welland.
8. There was a lineup 10 deep at the Tim Hortons inside the station at Burlington. Shameful.
9. Waiting on the platform at Burlington was a guy in his early 20s reading a book on JavaScript.
10. Something obviously didn’t agree with one of the passengers . . .
10a. This is what happens when you go on a “see food” diet. So many will just eat anything someone puts in front of them.
11. More “nanny state” messages. This in addition to a sign in the middle of the Willowbrook rail yards that reads, “CAUTION WATCH FOR TRAINS.”
12. Dear Metrolinx: This just isn’t a thing anymore. In fact, it never was a thing.
13. A DWAM who could have passed as a close relative of federal public death official Theresa Tam boarded at Port Credit and hunted around for an empty seat before settling on one across from a fellow DWAM. No doubt she felt so much safer by opting for the extra “protection.”
13a. It’s a virtual certainty that any idiot still wearing a mask has taken at least three shots of that deadly depopulation agent Justin Trudeau laughably claims he never forced Canadians to take.
14. Parked at the Ontario Food Terminal was a truck from Bison Transport. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the SPRM keeps following me around, even as the ninth anniversary of my defection from that place approaches.
15. Even in the midst of the mad crush of humanity of weekday commuters piling off the train and going down the stairs at Union, people cannot put down their phones. One guy was watching some video of mini-bikers in the middle of a desert and a woman was in the middle of reading a long email.
16. At the College station is a mural featuring Montreal Canadiens players. Somehow I rather doubt there is a mural featuring Leafs players anywhere in the Metro in Montreal.
17. Good Foot delivers your packages locally with pride. Does that mean they only have gays doing deliveries?
18. In the subway was a notice from the TTC stating, “There is no excuse not to pay your fare.” In the Old Country, so many ride for free that there is no excuse to pay fare.
19. This woman who boarded at the St. Clair station spent much of her trip fawning over the beige poodle in the duffel bag decked out in a blue coat . . .
20. One of many forlorn fellows in the subway . . .
21. At the Bayview station, someone used the escalator to haul his bike down rather than use the elevator.
22. On my return trip, a young woman who boarded at Rosedale was constantly holding her stomach and as she got off at Bloor-Yonge, she looked like she wasn’t more than a dozen seconds away from involuntarily expelling its contents. Wherever she did the dirty deed, I was thankful I wasn’t nearby to bear witness to it.
23. There were many ads in the subway urging people to help Ukrainian families. I feel for them, but it’s not as though we haven’t been doing enough.
23a. Admittedly, I don’t know what’s going on in that part of the world, but there’s a serious 1984-esque odor emanating from that conflict. Are we at war with Eastasia or Eurasia?
24. Another ad in the subway stated that high school graduation is the first step toward poverty reduction. Not with no-fail policies it isn’t.
25. A new guard page for the stack cannot be created . . .
26. Plastered all over the propaganda boards in the York Concourse was a Globe and Mail article chastising Vladimir Putin for stifling democracy and cracking down on dissent. Yet they remain silent as Justin Trudeau does the very same thing right here at home.
27. History was made on the return trip as no one at Grimsby asked the driver if he was headed to Burlington.
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