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On the Road – Kindergarten Graduates, Free Goodies, Soup Recipes and More

April 22, 2023

Highlights and lowlights from yesterday’s bus-bike trek to and from Hamilton and Burlington:

1. Make a wish . . .

2. Zerp was here . . .

3. Free clothing and footwear . . .

4. But sadly, few of them hold political office . . .

5. Free mattress. Slight wear.

6. Classy display on the side of a garbage bin outside the Tiger-Cats’ stadium . . .

7. Someone thinks Eion is a fag . . .

8. On the sign of a school I passed by on Cannon Street was a notice stating when retakes for senior kindergarten grad photos would be taking place. You graduate from university, college or high school. You do not “graduate” from senior kindergarten.

9. Farther down the street was a mother walking her child to school. The kid was wearing a mask. Outside. Oy.

10. Displays of street art around Hamilton . . .

 

11. Be sure to “RVSP” for this queer tabletop and board gaming group . . .

12. Walking down James Street was a woman in her late 20s or early 30s with her nails painted a florescent lime green.

13. Must be a lot of diabetics who patronize this downtown coffee shop . . .

14. In that same coffee shop, one guy walked in and ordered one of their pastries. The chubby woman behind the counter asked if he wanted an end piece or a piece from the middle. He answered that he wanted a big piece.

15. Too late for those who have taken one or more of those genocidal poison injections . . .

16. Whoever Ape5 is . . .

17. Display outside the Hamilton Artists’ Center . . .

18. A couple of the community residents bums of Hamilton’s downtown core . . .

 

19. Apparently humans aren’t real . . .

20. Message on a plaque for sale at the Hamilton Farmers Market: It’s the cat’s house. We just pay the mortgage.

21. My kind of store . . .

22. Free headphones . . .

23. Striking federal government workers employees were out in force in downtown Hamilton:

 

Slogans on their banners read:

  • Worker’s deserve better
  • Fair wages now
  • Virtual work is real work. Fair contract now.
  • Building a better tomorrow
  • United we bargain, divided we beg
  • 2% is for milk

If they were truly agreeable to a fair contract, they’d happily accept an immediate 25% pay cut. And then sue their union for rolling over and allowing the government to force them to take potentially lethal poison injections in order to keep their jobs.

For the rest of us, a proper response to their picketing would be for a handful of the many who suffered and continue to suffer so terribly under the government’s barbaric cruelty to throw bags of Monopoly money at them. I mean, how much more do they want?

23a. When workers go on strike in the private sector, consumers can choose a competitor’s product or service. This, of course, hurts the employer, but it also hurts the employees, because if the employer loses market share as a result of the strike, even when it is settled, jobs are lost. That counterbalancing factor is not present in the public sector. The union can shoot for the moon without any fear of repercussion because it’s not as if we can go to another government. Yet another problem of government monopolies.

24. Another “Don’t fall down and hurt yourself” warning from the nanny state . . .

25. But no paper or scissors . . .

26. I never promised you a rose garden . . .

27. I really appreciate the effort they’re going through to put a dedicated bike lane on Plains Road in Burlington, but they’ve been working on it since I was last through there in October and it’s still not finished. Obviously, they’re working to a Manitoba timeline, not an Ontario timeline.

28. I never figured I’d ever see King Arthur’s Court . . .

29. As the years go by, the cries for justice from those who took the “safe and effective” injections are only going to grow louder and louder . . .

30. Video of the ride from the Burlington Waterfront to and from the lift bridge over the Burlington Canal:

31. Numerology on the covered bike rack at Mapleview . . .

32. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades . . .

33. Waiting in line for the Niagara-bound #12 bus at Burlington was a guy wearing a blue Leafs T-shirt arguing with another guy about which of Mitch Marner, William Nylander or Auston Matthews the Leafs should trade. He said there would be no way they’d trade Marner because he’s the hometown boy and thought the proper thing to do was to trade Matthews as he’d bring in more value in a potential deal.

34. As this animated conversation was taking place, I was talking with a woman from somewhere north of Barrie who was headed to the Falls. A first-time traveler on GO, she bought an e-ticket, but because she missed her 8:00 train, she bought another one, unaware that the ticket would have been good for any train.

She asked me about charging outlets on the bus and train since she was listening to music the whole way and her phone was down to 20% on the charge, though she later said she was not a phone person. She went on to tell me she had lost her driver’s license and was looking at getting an e-bike.

When I said I was originally from Winnipeg, she asked what the weather was like there. After I told her that they just had a snowfall warning where 10-20 cm was supposed to come down, she said, “Oh, it gets cold there?”

35. As soon as the bus pulled up to the stop, the driver immediately got out and ran around to the other side to make a phone call, something he did again at Stoney Creek and at Fairview Mall. Yet even though he wasn’t watching, every boarding passenger still paid their fare. Once again, this is not the Old Country.

36. Among those boarding at Burlington was a prematurely aged woman in her early 40s wearing far too much makeup and showing off far too much of a pair of surgically enlarged body parts with a gaggle of kids and a large dog in tow.

37. It is not a proper trip without someone at Grimsby asking the driver of a bus with a big lighted NIAGARA FALLS sign out front and along the side if he’s going to Burlington and this one was no exception. I don’t get it. There are even separate platforms for the Burlington-bound and Niagara-bound buses.

38. After we left Grimsby, Leafs Guy got on the phone and told the person at the other end of the line that he’s got a chicken in his bag before instructing him or her to take $250 out of the account and leave $70. He went on to say that he opened his first account at TD because his buddy Chris worked there. Apparently Chris once withdrew $200 worth of $5 bills just because he could.

On his next call, Leafs Guy said he buys the pulp-free orange juice because of his mother. Otherwise, he has no problem with pulp. After asking “Did you find my pair of black Jordans?,” Leafs Guy said the soup the person at the other end of the line was making should have two to three large carrots and an onion along with some dill. Some recipes call for it and some don’t, he said.

On his third call, he laughed about there being a Fairview Mall in St. Catharines and in Toronto. As a youngster, he would always joke about going to Toronto whenever someone said they were going to Fairview Mall.

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