Run for the ground
Funny how a day is made better when there’s a dash involved. As much as you learn to forswear the “run for the bus” after a few years in this city, from time to time a good sprint gets you home at a decent hour.
I’m on tickets for the next few weeks. A decision made after some calculations; why pay more for public transit than absolutely necessary? The part where you have to plan every trip, remembering to request a transfer and never doubling back is just a nuisance. The budget (a mental one) for tickets left me with a game to play this afternoon, to see if I could fit a medical appointment, a coffee purchase and a roundabout path to home into the allowable 90 minutes for a standard “correspondence”. I did well.
Up until the very end of my afternoon. I knew that I’d gone into my second hour when I stopped to order a kilo of Antigua. Still, the crowds in Old Quebec were light, so I bet on road construction delaying my express. At the last traffic signal, I spotted my favourite bus crossing at the next corner. Time to test the heart and lungs! Off I went at a dead run (not wanting to be dead because of a run, but it was only a few hundred metres). Up to the door, in, sit… and realize that my knapsack had unzipped and left the coffee bags in my wake. Back off the bus and almost into the arms of a kindly lady who had seen the loss and decided to do her part. Saved my $30 of custom ground.
Even better, the bus had been delayed by another red light, so I made my bet. Home again on a single bus ticket, with only a light cardio workout to mark the afternoon. It could have been worse.
