Bus Strike Adventures

OC Transpo Bus

For the past week (and before the Christmas break), I’ve had to find different ways of getting to school almost every day because there are no buses running.  Wednesdays I have no class, but I had to be at school to help recruit for cheerleading, so I was going to walk the hour to school, then someone recommended to me that I should take the shuttles (Carleton has school buses running from different parts of the city every half hour to help students get to their classes).  The closest shuttle stop from me is a half hour walk at our nearest shopping center/O-train stop, so I got bundled up, and left at about 3:45, since I had to be at school for 5, and figured that would give me enough time.  I got to the stop at about 4:20, and noticed a sign on the times board saying “Due to the weather, the shuttles will not be running today”.  There I was, boots on, with slippers underneath, down filled mitts, tights, yoga pants, a short sleeved shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, a down coat, and BOTH hoods on (I later got made fun of when I mentioned that I took off my hoodS.).  In other words, I was totally bundled up, and totally pissed that I walked half an hour to a bus stop where no buses would be coming.

After I got over my initial shock, and about 5 minutes of trying to call a cab (obviously busy every time I called, because how else would people get around these days?), I walked to the nearest Second Cup and called a teammate to come pick me up and bring me to school.  On our way to school I find out that they had changed the recruiting times from 5-7 to 4-6.  It was now 5:20.  So I get to school, take off my layers (and my hoods), and starting trying to recruit people.  Now has anyone ever had to attempt to recruit university aged guys to try out for a cheerleading team? NOT fun, let me tell you that.  Pretty much our approach is “if you think the guy is hot and jacked, go hand him a flier and chat him up”.  I’m clearly not very good at this.  I attempted to recruit for about 20 minutes, then a group of us decided it would be better if we’d just go to the residence and try to force people to try out hand them out there.  Well.  In order to get to the tunnels (do you really think we would walk outside?), we had to walk past one of the campus bars.  Now you should know that one of our favorite sayings is “Our drinking team has a cheerleading problem”, and we do live up to that saying.  We decided it would be easier for us to talk to people if we had a beer in us.  Well one beer turned into two, and two into three, and next thing you know we’ve forgotten all about handing out fliers, and were now talking about siblings having the same tongues, and things only the fiveblondes would understand like “touch tongues!”, and living on farms/ranches, since the group I was there with consisted of two sisters from Texas-Kelly and Kristina, and one guy who works on a farm-Matt (did I mention that he also is from a family of five siblings?  Only one sister though).  Kristina, by the way is my twin.  If you are looking at pictures from my cheerleading you’d better look twice to make sure that it’s actually me, because we have to do the same thing.  We were then talking about staying for trivia night, when I got a call that Krys was waiting for me outside res commons-almost all the way across campus.  So I grab my coat, say my goodbyes and run across campus…only to be met by a chihuahua in Krys’ truck!  Now I assure you, I wasn’t drunk enough to be seeing things…okay well maybe I was, but there was honestly a chihuahua in the truck.  I’ve never seen one up close, and Radar is enough to turn me off of them.  No offense to anyone who has one, but chihuahuas are creepy looking dogs in my opinion.  It turns out that this lovely dog is staying at my house for a couple of days while Krys’ sister visits us from Montreal.  I’ll let you all know how this goes.

I had totally forgotten that we (me, Emily and Krys) had planned a Monopoly date with Krys’ friend Dan and his girlfriend Felicia.  Monopoly is a touchy subject in our house.  We usually end the game in a big fight, and a win for Krys.  This time was different though.  This time I won!  It was a crazy game, and I didn’t quite understand how I won, but I’m not going to fight it, I’m going to take that win and be happy that I’m the one who broke Krys’ winning streak.  Oh yea, he also wins EVERY single  game we play, including Risk, Clue, and Whoonu.

Anyways, that was my wonderful adventure with the OC Transpo strike.  I was only planning on making it about my adventure getting to school for the recruitments, but I tend to ramble when I’m bored, and have 5 hour breaks in my schedule, which I do every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

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