MonkeyPants

A Night of Adventures.

Vancouver is Gripped! In! The! Icy! Jaws! Of! Snow! so normal buses aren’t running normal routes. But I still had to go to UBC tonight.
So I hopped a B-line and had the scariest bus ride of my life! The driver seemed to be racing some unknown demon, or maybe just liked the opportunity to open it up on the highway, and the bus fishtailed everywhere. I swear, the back end was in the other lane half the time. I wondered if articulated buses could actually jackknife, it was so bad. I was hanging on with both hands, and had my feet wedged in crevices for extra support. I thought about calling E to tell him I loved him, in case I didn’t make it home, but could not pry my fingers from their handholds.

But even stark terror comes to an end. The driver obligingly let me off somewhere near where I thought I might need to be. I basically bushwhacked through the snowdrifts until I got to the road I was looking for. That’s a lot of fun, and I think everyone should try it. I didn’t get eaten by coyotes, and I did get to walk through the heart of the frat house complex. It was beautiful and white and still, and from an open window, I could hear “I Shot the Sherrif”.

Coming back was another adventure. I got back out onto Wesbrook without incident and waited with about 84,000 other people for some kind of bus to come. Eventually, I got onto a 25, where, right next to me, a man sat down on the floor of the bus and started drinking a beer. Me, I was jealous.

I got off the bus with several other people, at Macdonald Street and we hiked through knee-high snow to wait for the 22.

It never came.

We amused ourselves by cheering on the drivers who were spinning their tires trying to go up the hill, watching drivers chatting on phones suddenly have to drop the phones to navigate, and asking for rides from cars going down. The funny thing is, lots of people slowed down. Some smiled. Some looked us over like we were hookers. Some looked alarmed, as though we might carjack them. But it took half an hour before someone stopped.

To the nice lady in the minivan coming home from the theater, who laughed and told us to pile in: I salute you. I send you thoughts of kindness and benevolence. I hope Karma comes to your house tomorrow with bounteous baskets of whatever you like best. I would come myself, with fresh, homemade chocolate chip cookies, but I forgot to ask where you live.