Public Transit, I Miss You ....

Blog readers from outside my hometown are probably unaware of this, but Canada's Capital is currently in turmoil. Nah, I'm not talking about coalition governments and political subterfuge. I'm talking about the crippling transit strike that has made the last two days a living hell for anyone needing to get to and from the downtown core. Day 1 of the strike was coupled with the tail end of a winter storm that dumped close to 40 cm of snow on us and made street parking an impossibility. By the time I made it downtown, parking of any kind was impossible to find (though I tried - and ended up damaging my car to the tune of $2,000 or so when I scraped a post in a tight-squeeze parking garage that, to add insult to injury, had no parking spots available anyway). I ended up parking about 15 minutes away from work. Yesterday was not much better. I took a ride in with a colleague; it took 1.5 hours to get downtown, and after driving around for an additional half hour looking for parking anywhere in the downtown grid, my colleague ended up at a shopping mall about 15 (walking) minutes away. Last night when we left, it took 45 minutes to make it from the parking garage to the Queensway (main expressway through Ottawa) - which normally takes under 3 minutes.

I can't believe the amount of wasted time and productivity this strike has caused so far. Personally, I have worked just over half my scheduled hours in the last 2 days. So, today, I've decided to forego the commute from hell and work from home. In my Senators jammies, no less. I don't officially start til 9 so I have 5 minutes left to whine at you about how horrible this transit strike is.

While my car is still driveable, the panels on both passenger doors will both have to be replaced, and possibly the back quarter panel too. When I drive over 40 km an hour, the wrecked door handle rattles in the wind. The word "scraped" doesn't completely describe what happened. It's more like "crushed as though the outside of the car was nothing more than tin foil". Ugh. Hopefully my father, who gave me this car, is way too busy doing whatever people in heaven do to notice what I've done to it. Thankfully my husband, who tends to get upset about these sorts of things, has been really sweet to me about it and even gave me a pep talk to the effect that I am not in fact a bad driver and that I shouldn't be nervous behind the wheel just because this happened.

I've been a bit cranky over the last couple of days, but am feeling better today, what with staying in my Sens jammies, and also the possibility of going to the Senators-Tampa Bay game tomorrow night (the husband thinks he can score me some last minute tickets).

So even when life is bad, life is still good. There are far worse things in life than bus strikes and damaged cars. I know, I've lived through a few, and survived those, so this should be a breeze.

Here's hoping the city and the union manage to come to their senses over the weekend (although they're not currently talking), and that if you need to get anywhere this weekend, you have the means to do it!!

Ciao!