Making It Up As I Go Along #295

MONDAY...
— Somewhat lazy start to the day... in on evening shift for today, due to the late return from Toronto yesterday.
— Work’s okay. In with Steve, Dave and Frankie. I take off an hour early to try to get home and to bed before it’s too late. Back to day shift tomorrow.

TUESDAY...
— Wake to rain... look out the window to see sloppy snow on the cars. It may be a touch slick... but ends up not too bad.
— Work is fine. Some training of Jen and some AFIS work.
— Groceries and some organizing of stuff when I get home. Some TV to end the night.

WEDNESDAY...
— Snow in the morning is a pain. 45 minutes driving to work due to snow plows and stupid people.
— Snow stops but it’s still pretty slow going in the afternoon. I do some table shopping... get a folding one at Home Depot... and bring it home to find a crack in the top. Blah! So back I go to switch up.

THURSDAY...
— Snow day. But a bad one because we still work. So it’s 45 minutes to get in... and another 45 to get home. Probably 15 cm of snow falls through the day.

FRIDAY...
— Work is alright... still takes a while to get in with the winter driving...even though the roads are fine today.
— Poker night. The game is a bit messy and we end up just playing two games at once rather than join them up as people get knocked out. That’s too bad. Hopefully people still enjoy themselves... it was a pretty fun night even with the mess. Steve and Bruce are the two winners.

SATURDAY...
— Lazy day around the house. I actually haven’t had one of those days in a while... and by late afternoon, I’m starting to feel like it’s possible that the cold everyone at work has been getting, is hitting me.

Traveling with Wagons
There are aspects to traveling that I really like... and other aspects that drive me nuts. Recently, I went to Toronto for Sam’s wedding, and the good and bad both presented themselves to me throughout.

On the bad side, I have come more and more to hate the wait. Waiting to travel is such a boring and unsettling thing all at once. My worst part of going home for holidays is now the wait in an airport. You line up in order to sit and wait... then line up again only to sit and wait some more.

It used to be that you had to line up in order to check in. You’d give them your bags and get your boarding pass. Then Ottawa got the kiosks where you can get your own boarding pass. You’d print it off and then walk past the line of people waiting. You’d be in a small line of people who’d just toss their bag to an employee at a counter and then you’re on your way to security.

Now, the line to check your bag is as long as the boarding pass line used to be. The self help kiosk no longer does anything to speed up your process. Yes, you still use it to get your pass... but then you line up for forty minutes to hand over your bags.

And speaking of bags... be it travel by plane or by train... I have gotten to a point that I hate most people’s baggage. What I speak of is the blasted bags on wheels that travelers drag behind them. We’ve returned to our youth! Where once we ambled along streets with a wagon full of toys, we now amble through terminals with luggage full of clothes.

But in our youth, you’d be one or two kids walking along with all the space needed for your wagon. In an airport, or a train station, we have hundreds or thousands of people, each with a wagon in tow. And it seems that the handles allow the luggage to get further and further away from the owner. If you enter a walkway, say from buying some gum or a bottle of water, you have to wait twice as long to merge into the crowd. You let the person walk past... but then their baggage scurries well behind them. From wheel of bag to tip of toe, a traveler now probably measures a good five feet in horizontal length.

The result is a complete loss of personal space. I’m forever having to slow down my pace for a luggage dragging old lady that veers in front of me... oblivious to the fact that her bag is right next to me when she shifts over.

And bless their hearts... the parents have given children wheeled bags too! Eight year old kids yanking a pink piece of luggage along. For all intense purposes, we are literally telling our children to bring a wagon to the airport! It’s insane.

On this past trip, I was twice nearly run over by other passengers baggage. Going from the train to the station was a death match where only the most ruthless survived. The weak were trampled by Samsonite.

Another part of travel that irritates me is the constant rush to get nowhere. My train to Toronto was with assigned seats. Everyone getting on that train knew exactly what seat they were getting. Yet still, a half hour before the train was to be boarded, people began lining up.

And as the train pulled in to Union Station, a voice came over the speakers saying “remain seated until the train comes to a complete stop.” At least... that’s what I thought it said. Perhaps it’s code and I’m too new a train traveler to know any better. Because the second that announcement ended, people got up, pulled their bags out from the overhead bins, popped the handles, and began the wagon train line to the front of the car. For the last five minutes of that train ride, people were standing in the isle hoping to get to the front of the death match race.

But there are aspects of travel that fascinate me as well. I always aim for a window seat, be it day or night, on a plane or a train. I want to look out at the world as it goes by.

I remember, during my trip to Greece, there were tourists talking of the bus rides from place to place and how there was nothing they could do other than sleep. I couldn’t believe how much these people were missing. I sat glued to the window, watching as much of the countryside go by as I could. I’d examine the properties of the locals and imagine what daily life would be like there. And I remember staring at an old stone bridge for a path along the side of the road. And I wondered of all the history that bridge has seen.

The same goes for me in any method of travel. By plane, I’ve passed over many a town that I’ve never been to. I’ve viewed the cars coming and going and wondered what that day was bringing to the people down there. Who were going to visit family on the other side of town? Who were off to do a little shopping? And who were heading home from work?

I especially am drawn to the small communities in this way. When flying, you see how many road side communities there really are. Groups of a few hundred people living along the side of a road, with only a few side roads to push them out from the main street.

At night, you see less but it’s still all there. Lights give you pinpricks of life. The lights of cars, seen from 30,000 feet above. Or the lights of homes as a train pulls you through a sleepy little town.

From a train, you can see snapshots of strangers at night. On the way to and from Toronto, I looked out as we passed through small towns of a few thousand. And I could see into kitchen windows for a second as we passed. Seeing plates and pots on cupboards and pictures of flowers on the wall.

Just outside of Toronto, both on the way into the city and when we left, we passed by a fire in the brush. And I imagined homeless people gathered around, huddled for warmth and looking up at the lights in the windows of the passing world I was in. Two extremes of society, passing in the night.

A moment that sticks with me from this last trip occurred on the way back to Ottawa. I forget which town we were stopped in, but the train came to a complete stop right in the middle of the town. My window looked out at one of the residential streets. In fact, I was sitting in the middle of the street. The train came to a stop while crossing the street, so I was able to look the length of the road with the red lights flashing and the guardrail lowered to stop traffic from proceeding.

The homes on either side of the road were lite... but there was no movement outside. No cars, no people, it was a sleepy town on a Sunday night.

But then, up the road I see a movement. A person coming towards the train, swaying from side to side in the middle of the street. The closer the person got, the more clear the picture became. White bags in hand, a wool hat atop the head... and swaying back and forth, back and forth... rhythmically.

The person comes up to the train crossing and stands up straight... stopping the swaying... and pushes back his heal to slow down. He was a middle aged man, probably in his late forties or early fifties, and my train has interrupted his roller blade trip home from the grocery store. Both hands holding bags of groceries and the man standing on his roller blades, quietly shifting his weight from one skate to the other as he waited... no roller blader ever stands completely still.

Then the train lurched forward and the view from my window shifted from the light of the street, with the man on his blades... instantly, the darkness of night overtook the view and I was left to imagine what lay within and beyond those dark bushes... All the while that man continued to wait for the rest of my train to pass... me on my train, like a traveler pulling wagon-like baggage behind.