Wednesday wins “most difficult commute” award

Wednesday morning I had a fine jaunt outside in the slush and ice.

I had planned to go to the hospital to give a blood sample for a diagnostic test and as I had already postponed an experiment at work to do it Wednesday morning, I decided a little bit of ice would not put me off. We had freezing rain the night before and it was still raining in the morning. I had phoned the General and their blood collection place opened at 7 AM so I wanted to be there right away to prevent it from taking too long. So I woke up at 5, had breakfast with Dan at 5:50 and then was out the door by 6:10. I had my purse and a bag with my lunch and a few books in it and was holding an umbrella up to try and keep somewhat dry despite the freezing rain carried on the wind. Our neighbourhood is very windy and today was no exception. The result of all this was what I can only refer to as the “Mary Poppins Effect”, as the wind literally blew me across the frictionless sidewalk. I managed to stop myself by grabbing onto a parked car, then slid across the street and down to the bus stop. For those who have read “The Restaurant at the End of hte Universe” you will know what I mean when I saw “Danger Area’s” ship could have taken some lessons from our sidewalk.

Upon succeeding to arrive at the bus stop, I discovered there was no room in the shelter but my unbrella was still doing a decent job of keeping me dry, despite the fact that two of the ends had already broken from being inverted about 5 times between our door and the bus stop. Then the lights went out. All the streetlights along the main road turned off and it looked like the lights inside the fire station went out too. I was really worried that the power was out in our apartment and how long it would take to get it back on. Dan was planning to go to school and practice singing later in the day and I wondered how he was going to handle the lack of electricity.

A bus came in a few minutes and I got on without checking the sign as I was just relieved to get out of the wind and rain. The bus wasn’t the one going to the metro, as I was expecting, but was the downtown express bus. This was fine as I was going to the General anyway, but I knew we had to take the expressway to get there and had some very disturbing visions of the bus sliding on some black ice, going over the railing and crashing in a horrible and firey way. I listened to my music (ELO) and tried to stay calm about it as we approached the exit. Thankfully, for once a Montreal Bus Driver allowed his better judgement to reign over the Need For Speed and we very gently exited onto the expressway and nothing happened. I had to take the metro a few stops and then when I got to Guy I realised I didn’t know where and when to catch the bus that goes up the hill to the hopstial and it was already 6:55 so I decided just to walk and take my chances. I saw fire trucks and a police car outside of the metro and wondered what that was all about. Later I found out that this area of town is the first to get salted because of the hill and they had even put up a rope at the intersection of Dr. Penfield and Peel so people could get across the street safely!

So up the hill I went. The rain was running over the ice, but surprisingly, it was grippy enough and I hardly slipped at all. There were a few other people trudging up the hill so I king of just followed them and I ended up in the basement of the hospital but was able to get directions to the blood clinic. Mass chaos would be an overstatement, but it was definately disorganizsed. After being stuck in a leaky airport full of angry screaming Italians with less than 24 hours until another connecting flight, this seemed like a walk in Hyde Park on a sunny summer day. Anway, my theory that everyone else would stay home today because of the weather was seriously flawed, as there were about 40 people waiting already. What really surprised me was that some of these people were rather frail looking senior citizens and I had to wonder just how they managed to get to the hosptial. Must have called taxis. Anyway, the nurse who was supposed to take our blood wasn’t in (I wonder why?) but eventually some extra people did come and after an hour it was all done.

As I had never visited the General before, it took me a while to figure out how to get out of the hopsital and down to the bus stop. I slid down Cedres (using the traffic light post to stop myself at the intersection of Cote des Neiges), and walked up to the 165 bus stop. The traffic going from CDN to Downtown was nose-to-nose and not moving at all. There were a number of absolutely packed busses stuck in the traffic and although I was extremely glad I wasn’t on one of them, I knew there would be very few bussees coming back out of downtown. Eventually a bus that was out of service stopped (thank you mr. kind bus driver) and picked up people along the street on the way into CDN. I got off at the metro, switched at Snowdon, and took it to De La Savanne (once again, I missed the last bus by 10 minutes). I stopped at the dep and picked up a bag of chips partly to get something to eat and partly to get some change to call Dan. It turned out the power wasn’t out in our apartment (miracle of miracles) and everything was fine back home. I called work and told them I would be there by 10 (estimating a good 40 minutes rather than the usual 25, which was right on the nose) and then started the trudge to work.

If it hand’t been raining, it would have been not too bad. But unfortunately the rain was very heavy and I had to hold up the umbrella the whole way. After the blood sample they had taped a cotton thing to my arm and I hadn’t taken it off and it actually started to bruise my arm because it was being compressed when I held the umbrella. Anway, in my bag I had several books as well as layers of clothing I had removed (I dressed for -20 weather and it was 0 and 100% humidity) and everything got very wet by the time I had made it to work. The sidewalks were extremely slippery and there were massive slushy puddles everywhere so my shoes and socks were soaked. Fortunately I had another pair of shoes in my bag and after they dried out I was able to take off my socks and wear those (yes sockless!) at work all day.

We went out later in the evening and I couldn’t even believe it was the same city. It had warmed up and liberal amounts of salt and rocks had been spread everywhere and it was so easy to walk!