When transit gets you down...

This is the sad tale of a young girl taking a bus to go to a slow pitch game.

It shouldn't have been that hard: GoogleMaps was pretty clear on which route she was to take.  First was the LRT.  Who could have known the recorded voice announcing each platform was one stop off?  Not paying attention, the girl got off the train one stop too late and had to wait for the returning train to return her.  Once at the correct stop, she deliberated, undecided, which side of the road, and which #19 stop, she should wait at.  The all-knowledgable Internet had told her to head west.  Checking to see if she could still distinguish her right from her left, the girl waited on the far side.


Before long the bus arrived.  She was glad to feel the unyielding back of the seat as she settled in for at least a half hour ride to her destination.  Looking up from her book at one point, she realized the driver had been trying to communicate something to her with elaborate hand gestures in the giant rearview mirror.  "This is the end of the line!" he told her when she walked over to him to make sure he wasn't having a heart attack.  Kicked off into unfamiliar University territory, she searched the bus stop signs for the number 19, but was disappointed.  She sighed, uncertain if she should try to find the train station and try the whole trip again, or just give up.


There was a fence blocking off construction, and as she began to head towards the LRT, a sign caught her eye: "9, 19, and 199 wait on other side of construction".  Joy filled her heart: the 19 did stop there, she could still make it.  But, what did it mean, "the other side"? The other side of the building?  The other side of the fence?  She was caught in her wondering by the voices of the child and mother sitting behind herb on the concrete edge around some shrubbery.  "What bus are we waiting for?" the boy's voice asked; "The 19," she replied.  The girl settled across from them against part of the fence feeling just peachy.


Then it started to rain.  Many busses passed.  Sometimes the girl would up from the splattered pages of her book and make sure the mom and kid were still there, that she hadn't totally missed the bus stopping and driving away.  A bus was driving up...the 9...119.  The girl sat back down disappointed, when the young boy spoke up again, "But that's the 119."  "We can take either the 19 or the 119."  And they climbed into the bus.  The girl was on her feet again and she could see past the people crowding the bus a pamphlet stuck next to the driver with the heading "19/119".  They were the same route!  The girl climbed on, grabbed a map, and sat, familiarizing herself with the lay of the land.


Then it started to hail into the bus through the open windows.  The girl was worried: what if she showed up and the game was cancelled?  At least she could say she had been there. She checked the time on her phone: twenty minutes til commencement.  Paying diligent attention to her direction, the girl waited for 13th Avenue.  Unfortunately, the bus was going through a residential zone and the streets weren't numbered.  When she hit 8th Ave out of the blue, she panicked and kicked herself off the bus.


The wandering walk afterwards would be too tedious to convey in detail here.  The only thing to know is that the girl went in circles for quite a bit looking for the athletic centre and experienced something quite significant before walking onto the slowpitch field with an "I'm sorry I'm late" demeanour.


After threeish innings, the game was rained out anyways.  Last game of the season.


And that's the story of the transitly-challenged slow pitch player.