In Airport Limbo

A favorable wind over the Atlantic put me into Toronto a fair bit early. This is both boon and... considerable disadvantage. It's technically about 9:00pm for me, and I still have another eight hours of today left. And I am starving. I spent most of the flight reading Sherlock Holmes (I ♥ iBooks sometimes. Mostly because it allows me to read in dark places without hurting my eyes. Such a fantastic invention), and in the back of my mind I was endlessly daydreaming about finding some good Indian food when I get back. (Something I missed in London, much to my regret, as one of my goals was to get take-out curry. Because... I have weird goals.) Unfortunately Hyde Park doesn't have any Indian food, so I might have to get take-out from one of the overpriced places downtown and drag it back to my apartment. Along with my luggage. And in a few hours I'm not sure I'll be awake enough to pull that off. I'm already flagging a bit. (I think we've officially hit the point in the day where my body is starting to go "Hey wait, why is there still sun? It's been more than 14 hours and there's still sun, something unnatural is afoot!")

( So, I suppose, in lieu of anything else to do, it's summary time! )

Still a half-hour left before my flight boards. This is going to be a long day, indeed.

Oh for crap's sake, Chicago

It took me two and a half hours to get home from the airport. An entire week of smooth sailing, peaceful if confusing transit, customs, baggage claims, millions of ways for things to go wrong.

I get back to Chicago and it's 80+ degrees out for some inexplicable reason (something I don't really intend to complain about, but is still worth remarking on). I get on the blue line, and suddenly it's packed to the brim with incredibly noisy Polish soccer fans, then a stop later there appears a silver-painted street performer who starts giving some kind of sermon about the evils of homosexuality, then I'm surrounded by Parisian tourists, and the train announcer actually calls soccer football at the transfer to the red line at Jackson. I shake my head, and think "Well hello again to you, Chicago" and head up to my bus stop.

And then I wait for my bus, and wait a bit more, and finally I see it coming, but it blows past our stop. I shout and wave my CTA pass, along with the three or four other people at the stop, but it barrels on past anyway. Whatever. It's not terribly long before another bus shows up. "Very hello, Chicago."

Aaand then there's about 20 minutes of traffic because Chicago will take any excuse to close off Columbus Drive (Chicago marathon tomorrow) and there's a big soccer game on. Then we finally get on Lake Shore and suddenly traffic just stops, because something obviously went very wrong just moments before. We're stuck for maybe 15 minutes while ambulance after ambulance goes by, police show up and alternately block and direct traffic. No one on the bus had seen that many ambulances all going to one accident in a very long time, if ever (I was in the latter category. The worst LSD incident I've seen was an SUV engulfed in flames during college). We eventually surmise that a bus must've been involved, and as we finally get past the accident, the whole population of our bus pressed against the side windows to see what was going on, we see that it is, in fact, an extra-long CTA bus far off the road in some trees.

And that's when I realize that this is the bus that blew past my stop, that I'd yelled at only a few minutes before. The bus I very easily could've been on. Thankfully it doesn't look like it's as bad as it could've been, considering it was a "full" bus (70-80 people). (I originally said no one was seriously injured, but the article has updated since then and that's no longer the case.) And because this is the age of the internet, there is even a video of the bus shortly after the crash. (I guess I should warn you, that video is a bit disturbing to me because I ride this bus EVERY DAY for at least 1/3 of the year, and I still can't think of a good reason for this to have happened and so, as is human nature in regards to the unexplained, it makes me nervous and uncomfortable. But there's nothing graphic to it, other than a very banged up CTA bus and some shaken people.)

Guys, I have NEVER, ever been so happy that a bus didn't stop for me. It's bad enough that my vacation is now punctuated with such a crazy near-miss. Freaking crap. Nothing like narrowly missing being in a bus crash to bring you back down to earth after vacation. Chicago, when I said I love cities that abuse me, I did not want you to get back up to this nonsense as soon as I got back, seriously.

I'm also still starving, which I think I'll realize properly once I stop being nervous and uncomfortable.