10:30 bus

Gardiner Expressway, Saturday afternoon


This morning university students returning to Guelph and Waterloo were lined up across Toronto bus terminal waiting to board. I encountered the same problem on a Monday morning several weeks ago, but that time everyone got onboard; today I was lucky to get a seat. From now on I must remember to avoid the 10:30 bus at the beginning of the week. I've seen Greyhound call a second coach to carry excess passengers, but I'd rather avoid the uncertainty and travel at a quieter time when I can have two seats to myself.

To add to the drama, four or five middle-aged tourists had an altercation with the driver. One man approached yelling and waving his ticket just as I reached the head of the line, but by then the driver just laughed and ignored him. It was unclear whether they held invalid tickets or had attempted to cut into line.

On the bus I knitted a few more rows of my slipper, then launched into reading Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the 1968 inspiration for Blade Runner. After the cyber-paradise of Snow Crash, it's amusing to discover android chasers keep their information in paper files.