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An Excursion: Getting Home

So, in the ongoing saga that I have been writing about the last few weeks, a perfect storm of random occurrences led me to taking a trip to the office. Once there, I went about my day, but leaving led me to wander through a mine field of geese and goose droppings. Incidentally, I also happened to mention this to my coworkers, and one of them introduced me to the nickname that Canadian geese sometimes go by: the "cobra chicken." All in all, that one day led to much hilarity.

Still, at this point in our tale, I wasn't home yet. The Mild Wife was out and about that day, so we had agreed to carpool. I was going to hop on the bus, and she would pick me up from a BART station. We've actually done this a bunch, and it had become my go-to means of transportation before the pandemic started. It saved me from having to deal with rush hour traffic, so I was actually a big fan of this process. I expected far less traffic on this day, but even so, it was a sound plan so that's what we went with.

Now, there is a bus stop near the office, but it's a short walk away. I haven't actually measured it, but I can usually do it in less than ten minutes. Mind you, that's walking at a leisurely pace, so it's not exactly a stressful ten minute walk. There's even a path that cuts through the buildings and parking lots that makes this awfully convenient, so I wasn't particularly worried about getting to the bus stop.

I was, however, concerned about the bus schedule. After all, I hadn't taken that bus in over a year, so I had no idea if the schedule had changed drastically. Once I was logged in to my laptop, this was actually one of the first things I did; I had to make sure I knew when to leave so I could get home okay. After a bit of clicking around, though, I realized that the schedule wasn't too different from what I remember. There was a banner saying that they had work shortages so occasionally buses might be late, but otherwise, the schedule looked perfectly reasonable.

Well, when the time came, I packed up my stuff and moseyed on over. I actually left something like twenty minutes before the bus was supposed to arrive. My day was done no matter what, but given the potential unpredictability of the buses, I wanted to give myself a bit of a cushion. I figured in the worst case, I could stand and wait for ten minutes. It was worth the wait to minimize the stress.

Remember how I said there was a path that cut through the building and parking lots? Well, the path was still there, but there was now a padlocked gate blocking said path. I'm not entirely sure I know why this was the case, but about five minutes into my walk, I realized that I had a problem. I had to backtrack, and walk the long way around to get to that bus stop. I also had five minutes less with which to make this trip, since I'd spent those five minutes getting to the gate.

Well, crap.

I realized my dilemma with some dismay, and quickly turned to go back the other way. My leisurely walk now was now a power walk, to try to make up the lost time and still arrive at the bus stop on time. As I was hustling down the sidewalk, I kept thinking that I was really glad I had given myself that cushion, or else I would have missed the bus for sure. Still, I was going to be cutting it close, so I glanced at my watch on more than one occasion.

With two minutes to spare before the appointed time, I saw the bus stop. Mercifully, the bus was not there, so I figured that I had made it in time.

I walked up to the actual seating in the bus stop, looked around, and realized I was the only one there. That might very well have been because of the pandemic, but it also could have been because I missed the bus. Trying to alleviate my concerns, I whipped out my cell phone to try to look up the "next arrival" site/app for the buses. No sooner than I had looked down at my phone than I heard the rumble of a large vehicle coming my way. Yup, the bus arrived as soon as I tried to verify its arrival time.

After the sudden and unexpected rush of adrenaline from the padlock, I was more than happy to know that I wouldn't have to agonize over whether I had missed the bus. I got on, sat in a seat, and felt a rush of relief.

The rest of the ride went smoothly, and I met up with the Mild Wife shortly thereafter. Still, if I end up back at the office during the pandemic again, I'm giving myself that twenty minute cushion again, and I'm taking the long route from the beginning. I'm not trying to get my heart rate up like that again.

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