I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. It was just before
8:00AM and I was but one bus ride short of being on the east side of Calgary. I
don't think I have ever been able to be on that particular road, that early in
the morning. I was looking forward to not having to make my usual long walk from
the bus stop to the Trans-Canada at the end of town. Silly me.
When I got on the bus, I asked the driver if he could let me
out at the stop furthest along the Trans-Canada as I was hitchhiking towards
Winnipeg. He said he would. I put my pack in the storage area across from him
and sat down in a seat where I could look out the window. I made sure that the bus driver could see
me every time he looked back. It was a
pleasant ride in that we went through some attractive, generally well maintained
areas of the city.
Usually once I am on a bus, and the driver has told me that he will tell
me when I need to get off, I relax a bit and enjoy the ride. I was doing so
when I started to realize that we were passing homes, stores and schools that I
had seen already once that day. I went up to the bus driver to ask if
"we" had missed my stop. He said "yes - sorry - it was the last
one". He let me off at the next stop, and off I went. I was more than a
bit put out. Either he had forgotten about my request or he had not known which
bus stop I was referring to. Regardless, he had lied to me. We had not just
missed my bus stop. The spot where he had let me out was nowhere near the
Trans-Canada. He had let me out at spot that was closer to the C-Train station
where we had started, than to my needed destination.
So I walked and walked. I walked for at least 45 minutes. I
recognized in some vague way where I was and so managed to at least head in the
right direction. It was a nice day and if I had not been carrying the pack, it
would have been quite enjoyable. It also would have been more enjoyable if I
had not been so irritated at the driver. I have had more mis-direction/bad
direction from bus drivers in Calgary than in any other city. I sometimes
wonder if the concept of anyone wanting to leave their fair city is so incomprehensible
to them that they are incapable of telling a stranger how to leave. They really
need to train the drivers better.
Eventually I came to the Trans-Canada and headed east. As I
have written in other years, it is a long bloody walk to get to a point where
it is both safe and useful to drop my pack and stick out my thumb. At any time
of day, there are hundreds and hundreds of cars going past. The vast majority
of them are local traffic, people who are going only a short distance They do not stop and in fact increase the congestion.chaos making it harder for anyone else to stop. One
needs to walk past the entrance/exit ramps to the Stoney Mountain Trail
(Calgary's ring road) to at least have some of that traffic filtered out. Fortunately
the shoulders are very wide. There is lots of room to walk - except of course
when one needs to cross over an entrance/exit ramp. That can get a bit sketchy in
part because with a pack on your back, it is difficult to turn one's head and
get a good view of the cars speeding up or down the ramp. I am always very,
very careful when crossing a road where cars are doing 80+ kilometres an hour.
I stood at my chosen spot for over three hours - once again
proving that the early bird does not always get the worm. I had arrived in
Calgary at 7:00AM, with the 45 minutes I used to figure out the transit system,
the long bus drive back to almost where I had started from, the well over an
hour walk to get to my spot and the time spent there doing nothing - I had used
almost up half of the day. There has to be a better way through Calgary.
Eventually I did get a ride - a ride that was going all the
way to Gull Lake.
No comments:
Post a Comment