Pleasant bus rides like this morning's almost make me want to rescind my vow earlier this week to "serial-kill all of Mississauga Transit."

One of the highlights of my bus ride to work this morning was opening a copy of the newspaper Dose and discovering that the center spread was a travel section all about Brockville, Kingston, Prescott, Gananoque, and the 1000 Islands -- all the places where I grew up. Included were photos of the Brockville courthouse, where I put soap in the fountain as a teenager, the Time sculpture on the Kingston waterfront, past which I frequently walked with girlfriends in university, and even my neighbor Muriel, whose house I helped renovate a few years ago. It was a nice surprise.

The other highlight of my bus ride was that the emergency exit window right in front of me came loose and started flapping around crazily, which was pretty exciting.