On the Road – Cash Flow Projections, Competitive Bagpipers, Racing Drivers and More
July 22, 2025
Highlights and lowlights from yesterday’s bus-bike trek around Hamilton and Burlington:
1. Boarding the GO bus at Fairview Mall was a woman who asked the driver, “Is this the bus that’s supposed to leave at 6:33?” What other bus would it be? I wondered. There isn’t another one coming in either direction for over an hour.
2. Two guys speaking with British accents boarded at Grimsby and one of them began talking about having to fly to Montreal one day a week for a project he took on. “I should have been there three months ago,” he said. “I want to implement new projections for cash flow.” After a lengthy project-related discussion, the two of them turned to the UFC matches they watched this past weekend.
3. Nearby, was someone reading The Guncle, by Steven Rowley.
4. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Hamilton . . .
5. Passing through Lower Town, there was a strong, pungent and industrial odor of Eau de Hamilton in the air. How do people there stand it? I wondered.
6. The condition of the streets in Hamilton are worse than they were in the Old Country.
7. After taking a seat in Durand Coffee, I listened as a couple of older guys were chatting, one wearing gray, the other black. Gray Guy noted all the bodies being carted off the field last night. “What was it?” Black Guy asked. “Tiger-Cats. CFL,” Gray Guy replied. Clearly not everyone in Hamilton is all a-flutter over the Ti-Cats, who extended their winning streak to four games the previous night.
Moving on, Black Guy told his buddy he knows someone who works at a law firm who holds the world record for competing in the most ultra-marathons. Then he went on to say, “The number-one bagpiper in the world–I mean world championships and all–it’s so competitive–is a guy from Hamilton. . . . He left Hamilton to become a lawyer in Toronto. . . . It’s not an easy instrument to play. . . . It speaks to me in a way. It’s strange.”
When two more of his buddies came in, Black Guy paid for their orders, then sat down with them. One of those buddies said he saw a band this weekend that was really good and then went out for a long bike ride on an off-road trail out to Highway 99 and back.
8. As all this was going on, this chunky woman showing off her many rolls of fat was on the phone with someone talking about, like, health equity:
9. Perched outside the Bayview Cemetery & Crematorium in Burlington was an older woman on a lawn chair wearing a dipshit mask and reading the Red Star. With the dipshit mask on, I sure didn’t expect her to be reading Druthers.
I didn’t stop to ask as to what she was doing there, but I figured she was just waiting there outside the cemetery until she dropped dead to make it convenient for her family to deal with her remains. After all, the fact that she was wearing a dipshit mask outside makes it virtually certain that she’s shot up with as many gene-altering poison injections as the government will give her.
10. A couple of shots showing the new bike lane on Plains Road that they had been working on for over a year, complete with separate bicycle signals. It’s too bad they didn’t continue it all the way up to the QEW.
11. Take your clothes to this “laundrymat” . . .
12. I don’t know what they sell at Sephora in Mapleview, but from the strong perfume smell coming from the store, I don’t want any of it.
13. Ahead of me in line in the washroom at the Burlington GO station was an older guy with the message “The captain is always right . . . and I’m the captain” written on the back of his T-shirt.
14. Boarding at Confederation was a woman who asked the driver of the bus with a big lighted “NIAGARA FALLS” sign out front if he was going to Niagara Falls. A trip seemingly isn’t complete without encountering such a person.
15. The drivers I had in both directions definitely put the “go” in GO Transit. Not that I necessarily felt unsafe, but they were traveling faster than they really should have been, particularly when operating top-heavy double-decker buses. The driver on my return trip was even having a little friendly race with his colleague who was driving the #12B, the express route to Niagara Falls.
16. During the race back to St. Catharines, an older Asian guy seated across the aisle from me spent much of the time stabbing at a piece of fluff on the floor with his cane.
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