Another Airbus disaster

Let me tell you about my commute home yesterday.

After work, I got on my usual bus home, or so I thought. It drove along Eglinton Avenue for a while, then took a sudden left turn. Then I realized that while I was off work last week, Mississauga Transit had made a few changes. I’d carefully checked out the upcoming route changes beforehand, and my usual route home (the 17) was unaffected. The 17 was the only one along Eglinton, so it used to be a no-brainer: A bus comes, I’d hop aboard, I’d go home. However, what I didn’t know until then was that they'd added a new one along Eglinton (the 35), which goes somewhere decidedly not Islington station, and which I was currently on.

So I consulted with the driver about what to do to get back on track. "How about the 27?" he asked, pointing at the bus that was just arriving at the intersection we were crossing. Yes, the 27 would work! I take it to work in the morning instead of the 17, in fact. I ran for the new bus, made it aboard just in time, and settled in for the trip home.

Or so I thought. After a while, this bus also took a sudden left turn. Great.

"This is going to sound like a stupid question," I asked the driver, "but am I on the 27?" He looked at me like I’d asked a stupid question. "What bus am I on?" I sighed.

"You're on the 7. You're going to the airport."

Jesus Christ. Two wrong buses in one trip. This was only partly my fault. The other driver had said (or at least very strongly implied) it was the 27, and the front LED panel that should have confirmed this fact had been so sun-bleached and faint that it hadn't said anything. Why does Mississauga Transit keep conspiring to send me to the airport? Last time, the driver simply got lost for a half hour and an escort car had to be sent to bring him home. Maybe I should take the hint. Maybe I should just get on a plane and never come back to Mississauga.

"Look on the bright side," a girl said. "You get to see a whole new part of town."

"I've seen this part of town," I said. "I hate this part of town. It's terrible." Mississauga is unlovely as a rule, the industrial parts and the parts near the highways are worse than usual, and as for the airport, well, it is not for nothing that Douglas Adams wrote that it was no coincidence that no language had ever produced the phrase "As lovely as an airport."

So we got to the airport, and I had to jump aboard the 192 airport shuttle, which was waiting there. This finally brought me down to Kipling station. Where I'd normally take one bus, and then the subway, I managed to take three buses, only to arrive at the subway at a more distant point than the one at which I'd normally board.

The irony is that I actually arrived home at the very same time I had the day before, when I did everything right. It was a ridiculous detour, but I managed to make all my connections just right, so it didn't really set me that far off schedule.

Still, that doesn't mean I'm not an idiot.