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Transit Travel

Traveling with Luggage. Part 2.

Posted on April 16, 2017

Last week I posted about Traveling with Luggage. Part 1. Where my luggage visited more Airports than I did.

You would think that would have been my last and final adventure with luggage on that trip.

It wasn’t.

Leaving Ireland wasn’t bad, I got to play Airport tag with the Irishman. Turns out when you both leave from the same airport and have the same connecting flight, you can play tag in the airports around the world.

My flight from Dublin left on time and we landed at our connecting city of Toronto at our scheduled time. Now I was hoping that this time it would be a breezy two and a half hour lay over. Plenty of time to get my bags, go threw all the checkpoints and be on my next plane. However I stated this “breezy” layover by sitting on the tarmac for a gate for about 10 minutes.

Now this is where the “fun” began.

At Toronto airport you have to pick up your bags go, then go through Customs, re-check  your bags, then go through airport security, and then find your gate.

Part One: Customs.

Customs wasn’t an awful experience. In fact, it was pretty well-organized and the line moved at a reasonable speed. Start to finish, I was in and out in 10 mins.

Part two: Claiming my luggage.

I’ve been to the zoo before, I just didn’t think Toronto airport had one at the baggage claim.

Have you seen a herd of animals around a watering hole before? Well the baggage claim I had to use, looked very much like that but with 300 people. You see, we had one luggage carousel and 3 international flights.

I lost all sense of time waiting for my luggage to come out. People where complaining left and right, then when some luggage started to come off, they turned into vultures seeing if it was theirs. Eventually mine popped out, I took it and I left.

Part three: Re-checking of the luggage.

One must recheck their luggage when traveling Toronto airport. So you gotta line up with the rest of them.

This is the starting point of me

HAVING TO RUN THREW THE AIRPORT AGAIN.

I had handed my ticket to the lady and she said the words no one wants to hear, “You’re plane is boarding, if you check your luggage now it wont make the flight, it will if you take it with you.”

I’m sorry what?
How long was I waiting in the land of baggage claim?
What time was it?

The three guys behind me where apparently on my same flight and the following happened.

Step four and Five: Airport security & finding our gate.

Three guys and one redhead then proceed to RUN ACROSS THE AIRPORT trying to make our flight, that is now boarding.

We ran down hallways, on to a tram to another terminal.

Me with my carry-on, suitcase, and purse.
Them with their massive backpacking backpacks.

The guys politely asked the woman in charge if we could cut in and she said “No sir, I’M not allowed to do that”. Then they asked the people in line if we could cut through and make our plane. Protip- Ask the customers, not the staff to cut in line. To those people, thank you, you truly are nice and polite people.

Now airport security was a breeze until one of the guys got chosen for a random search for his bag. He flat-out said “You know what, you can keep it, I don’t need whats inside. I just want to go home and my flight is boarding”. Airport security handed back his bag and said have a nice flight.

WE MADE THE GATE!

The guys handed over their tickets, got scanned in and then I handed over mine.

“This isn’t your flight. Your flight is such and such gate and leaves in 25 mins”

ARE YOU [email protected]#$ING KIDDING ME?
I JUST RAN ACROSS A BLOODY AIRPORT!

Turns out the woman at baggage reclaim read my ticket wrong. Me being jet legged and not knowing how long I spent at the luggage zoo, didn’t check. As I walked to my CORRECT gate, I realized, I was very thirsty. So I set out to find a reasonably priced bottle of water.

Guess who I found at the airport.

It’s not the greatest photo of us, but I love it none the less.

Step six: Get on plane.

We even managed to get on the same flight together. I had to explain to the woman at the gate why I had my luggage with me and checked at the gate.

It was an uneventful flight from Toronto to Vancouver, just the way I like them.

It was an excellent trip to Ireland and I can’t wait to go back.

Although I did learn that if I’m ever going to have connecting flights, I’m going to have a 5 hour, at the least, lay over to avoid having to run through yet another airport. Or, I’m just going to fly direct.

Transit

The Bus part 3.

Posted on June 13, 2016

If you know me, you know I take the bus to get around the lovely city of Vancouver. Random, weird and strange things happen to me all the time. Today was one of those days where I needed an adult.

I got smelled by a guy.

Not once, but three times and I’m not even sure where to being with this. From the beginning I suppose!

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and I had spent the early afternoon exploring Italian day on the drive. I knew it would be sunny outside, so of course I had put on sunscreen before leaving the house. I’m a redhead, next to eating and drinking, sunscreen is apart of my life.

Anyway, it was time to head home. I had just gotten off the skytrain and was waiting to cross the street to wait for my bus.
Enter male redhead and the following conversation went down.

Oh my god, can you believe this weather?! Its so sunny and hot out! -Random guy
Yeah its pretty beautiful out! -Me
How do you not have a sunburn? I have a couple of sun burns now and you are just, NOTHING! How do you do it?
Well, sunscreen my friend.
Yeah but doesn’t it have like a bunch of chemicals in it?
Well, I’ll take chemicals over looking like a lobster in an hour or a leather shoe when I’m older.
Ahah your right! But like so many sunscreens have chemicals in them! Do you use coconut oil? I hear its like a SPF 6, but don’t you think you would burn with it on because its like, an oil?
No I use a sunscreen by La Roche Posay and it is about 30$ a bottle.

This is where the guy proceeds to smell me.
THE GUY FULL ON SMELLED ME.
From my wrist up to my bicep.

But you don’t even smell like sunscreen! Like at all.

He then proceeded to smell me TWO MORE TIMES! Saying I don’t smell at all.

He then went on to tell me that when he’s working he drinks a 4L jug of water with those MIO water flavors because “Electrolytes are the shit!”. He also wears a hat at work, “You know the ones that the guys from Aladdin wear, with the thing on the back? Yeah I wear one of those”. He also keeps his beard because he never gets a sunburn on his face. Well except his nose.

This guy then takes off his shirt* and says “I use to wax but I would always get a sunburn, so I’m just natural now”. He then goes off to tell me about his ex-girlfriend who would hug anyone at wreck beach, she got into a lot of drugs and that he hasn’t heard from her in a while. He hates this whole Netflix and Chill because he’s a guy who just wants to watch a movie and snuggle. He loves putting KD cheese powder on the giant bags of popcorn from Superstore and just watching movies.

I’m thinking to myself, “Where is the bus? Oh look the bus! Yes I’m closer to home and away from this guy!”

Clearly this guy was thinking the same thing because he asked if it was alright if he got my number, unless I had a boyfriend.

If you know me, I always say I have a boyfriend when someone asks for my number. So of course I said yes I do, but its new.

He asked if he could still have it, since it was just a new relationship because “You never know what could happen with new relationships”. I politely declined he said that was cool. We fist bumped, he said he was going to walk home to even out his tan and I got on the bus.

All the best!

*He never put back on his shirt.

Transit

The Bus part 2.

Posted on April 6, 2016

I take Transit everywhere, it’s how I get around. However, it seems like I’m an open target for crazy when I’m outside by myself.

Flash back to a few years ago, I was waiting for the bus near my house to go to a party.
A very intoxicated man sat on the bus stop across the street, notices me and proceeds to walk across a busy street, without using the cross walk to come over and say “Hi”. Now because this is the bus stop I use all the time, I tend to actually talk to people. It seems like the nice neighborly thing to do. However, I realize this man is very tipsy and is doing a bad job of hitting on me.  He decides where I was going that night, he’s going come too and show me a good time! He managed to say “Screw the crew, I’mmagoin to hang out with youuu!”

All I can think is “where the fuck is the bus?” well keeping a safe distance from this stranger.

I remember telling him that was not necessary and what would his crew think when he didn’t show up to wherever he was going? He seemed very satisfied with that answer and wandered away.

All I could think was “thank the heaven’s he left me alone! But really, where the fuck is the bus!?”

Across the street at the other bus stop going in the other direction, sat a man.

Taking a poo.

I kid you not, pants around ankles, squatting, doing his man business, in a bus shelter.  Now this is not the first time I’ve seen a person taking a poo at a bus stop, Thanks buses going down Hastings, but it is the first time I’ve seen it in my neighborhood.

Fun fact: Same tipsy guy from earlier.

Turns out he needed to poo and didn’t want to be rude and poo next to me. Chivalry at its finest I tell you!

Finally the bus shows up well this guy his doing his thing at the other bus, and I’ve never gotten on a bus so fast in my life. I looked out the window to see the man standing and struggling to put on his pants, yelling at the bus driver to wait. I could have sworn the bus driver said “Fuck that” under his breath as he closed the doors and drove away.

Needless to say I was late to the party but I had a very interesting reason to why!
Now not every transit related story is awful and cringe worthy, like this one.

I got the chance to work the Gluten-Free Expo thing through work with my co-worker Shayla. I was standing outside of Canada place waiting for Shayla to show up when this exchange took place.

A guy walked past me, glances over and trips over his two feet. He then says “Holy fucking shit, beautiful”. He looked super embarrassed as this took place right in front of me, so I said “Good morning” in the nicest

-I-just-saw-all-of-that-but-its-OK-it-was-cute-

kind of way. This guy then walked away, comes back and says “Sorry, I saw you almost tripped and forgot what direction I was going” and left.

So not every time I take the bus I need an adult, but lets face it, I need an adult when I go outside.

Transit

The Skytrain part 2.

Posted on September 11, 2015

As many of you know, my method of transportation around Vancouver is our lovely public transportation! So with that in mind, I think its time for another blog post about my adventures with it!

My route to work includes a bus, a skytrain and another skytrain. I’ve got my travel time to and from work down to about 20-30 minutes. Compared to what it was 3 years ago, I’d say its pretty great. With that said, I still see a crazy amount of things.

I took the Skytrain home after closing at work. Everything was pretty normal, I didn’t meet anyone on my way to the Skytrain from work. Their was a fair check going on at the top so Vancouver Police where present for Fare evaders. However, on this particular evening they were doing construction on the tracks, so the platform was only open on one side. Essentially this means you have to wait a little longer to get on a train in the direction you need to go. It usually goes, 2 eastbound, then 2 westbound trains. I have learned to wait for the second eastbound train because its much less crowded.

Cue first train going Eastbound.

Cue everyone trying to get on & off at the same time because people think they wont get to where they need to go.
With that said, there always seems to be that one person who forgets they need to get off and tries to get off before the doors close.

Cue drunk guy who has just realized this ^. Now add to the fact, people are already ready for the doors to close. Then add the fact Drunk guy also has a stroller with a baby in it. Now everyone is trying to get out of his way in an orderly but hurried fashion, including a guy who is in the process of moving his backpack off the ground and stepping out of this train to let the guy off.

Then it happened.

Drunk guy has started using his stroller as a battering ram to get people out of his way. He ends up hitting backpack guy with his stroller and getting wheels caught on that tiny gap between the train and platform. *In this moment I thought to myself “Mind the Gap!”*. He mistakes this as the backpack guy trying to prohibit him from getting off the train. Drunk guy than smashes his stroller him one more time and the stroller goes falling over and on to the platform.

And then the fight started.

Remember that stroller had a baby in it!  So enter Drunk guys girlfriend screaming MY BABY MY BABY!”. Well Drunk guy and backpack guy where throwing punches. Once Drunk guy realized the VPD where on the platform, he grabbed his kid from his girl and started yelling at VPD that Backpack guy threw his stroller and baby to the ground, so he had to defend his kid. 

Well, everyone else on that train and platform saw and said otherwise. They held the train to get statements from people and or pull them off for questioning, then let that train go.

All of this happened in less than 5 mins. It was crazy to watch and completely bizarre. This was actually the first time I’ve seen a fight break out in front me. It was also the first time I’ve seen someone use their stroller, equipped with baby, as a battering ram to move people.

Now arrived the second eastbound skytrain, and lo and behold, it was much less crowed then the first one. Of course I got on that one and begun the rest of my ride home.

Taking Transit in Vancouver is an adventure of its own and this is just one of the reason I find I feel that way,These are the Other Reasons.

Do you have any exciting stories about transit in Vancouver? Or am I the only one! Let me know in the comments below!

All the best,
Bailey B.

Transit

Kindness.

Posted on August 10, 2015

Kindness.

When you take public transport you see a lot of weird, questionable and crazy things. With that said you also see a lot of really great things. Vancouver is a hard place to meet people and make friends but I find it is a very friendly city full of really kind people.

Just last week I was waiting to take the bus home when I noticed two women chatting. From the looks of it, it appeared to be two old friends catching up after a long day. One woman was sharing her frozen cherries and asking her if she wanted her unopened smoothie drink. Although, after listing to the conversation they were two strangers who had shared a love for frozen cherries. The one woman was kind enough to share her food and drink with someone she didn’t know, simply because she wanted to.
The bus came and everyone got on, the two women said goodbye to each other and took different seats. The one woman who was sharing her food didn’t end up bringing a bag big enough for all of her items and things kept falling to the floor. A nice young man pointed out she dropped something and handed it back to her. After a few moments, she had dropped her bag of frozen cherries. She then picked up every last frozen cherry she dropped and took her seat again. Another older Asian woman had taken out a plastic bag from her purse and handed it to her.

When your car breaks down on a busy street, it’s never a good thing. Especially if it’s on Burrard St and Dunsmuir St, at 5:00pm on a Friday and you’re an older women of about 70 years old.
Many people walked past her car parked in the cross walk, on the corner, but also in the bus lane. After about 5 minutes a man came and asked if she needed help. She did, her car stopped working and she didn’t know what to do. This man then got her to put her car in neutral, and began pushing the car up the street to Melville St and out of the traffic. Three other men came to help this guy out in pushing the car up and out-of-the-way.

I see small acts of kindness and large ones all over the city. Like the many people who give up their seat on the bus or train to someone in need or that small child who wants to look out the window. Or the person who picks up a dropped shoe for a mom instead of walking over it. Holding open a door for someone simply because you can.

Vancouver is a great place to live and it has its moments of crazy on public transport but its reasons like these that I actually enjoy taking the bus.

All the best,
Bailey B.

Transit

The Skytrain.

Posted on August 3, 2015

I feel that you should know that I do not drive and as a result public transportation is my best friend when it comes to moving around the city. As I posted last week about my adventures on the bus I have had a few more on the skytrain.

Now, I’m used to being approached by strangers, having obscure conversations with them and having random things said to me. Here are a few of my true stories of taking the skytrain in Vancouver.

This took place on a Sunday morning, waiting for the skytrain at 29th ave. I got approached by a fellow redhead to and I quote “Hook up and keep the race alive among the reds”. I remember telling him it was too early for this shit and walked further down the platform away from him.

Picture Joey from friends and how he says “how you doing?!” in the way that he does. Now picture a creepy old man coming up to you saying that. Now picture me awkwardly walked away from him, hands outstretched and making a cringing face.

You sometimes find yourself standing between two strangers and somehow get caught up in things. This time I was just simply standing in the wrong spot on the train. Cue racist Italian singer belting out some Italian lyrics. How do I know he was racist? Well another passenger speaks Italian and called him out on it. Ensure argument with me in the middle of the two. Oh public transport early in the morning, I enjoy you and I hate you at the same time.

I find that when you take any sort of public transportation you end up seeing the same people week after week around the same time of day. You start to smile at them, work up to a good morning and how are you. This is a normal thing for anyone who isn’t me because I try to stick to my coffee, my newspaper or my phone because it could eventually lead to inappropriate conversations or see some weird things. I swear I’m not being rude, I’m just cautious first thing in the morning.

But sometimes it’s when you are coming home from work and you’ve stopped off at the grocery store. I had kept running into the same guy all over the store and kept smiling in the way you do when this happens to you. This does happen to people other than myself right? Well, who shows up well I’m waiting for the skytrain? None other than grocery man! He too was on his way home. This guy then proceeded to tell me that he could make use of my strawberries tonight if I wanted to follow him home for dinner. I declined and moved away from him.

I wish I could tell you that these are it for my transit adventures but they aren’t. I have many more and I’m sure many more will happen to me at some point.

I hope you got some enjoyment out of them because looking back I do!

All the best,
Bailey B.

Transit

The Bus.

Posted on July 27, 2015

As I posted last Monday about my lovely ride to work let me tell you about past encounters with some lovely transit folk on the bus. As a result of some of these, it’s part of the reason I tend to avoid the bus after dark, or whenever I can when I’m by myself. These have actually happened to me over the last 7 years of Living in Vancouver. I couldn’t make these up if I tried.

One time I was waiting for the 250 horseshoe bay bus to get to Park Royal, where I was working at the time, in downtown Vancouver. Now if you have ever visited downtown Vancouver, you would know its very business dress for a weekday. So it’s about 7:45 in the morning, people are moving about and I’m engrossed in my phone so I’m not paying attention to the world around me. I did notice a guy sit down right next to me on the bench and use the seat to his right for his gym bag. He was wearing blue sweatpants. I think nothing other than “You ass hat, someone else could sit there, does your bag really need that seat?” Not thinking “Why is this guy wearing sweatpants in downtown Vancouver on a weekday?” instead. I went back to my phone, shortly after this man sat down. Not even a minute later this girl came over and said to me “You want to stand over with me”.

Turns out the ass hat had started masturbating right next to me at the bus stop.

Probably the reason he was wearing sweatpants, easy access and cover up. I’m still really grossed out that had happened but so glad I didn’t see anything, thank the holy heavens, and that random girl was there to be my hero.

There was that one time I got told my boobs were offensively large and they should be covered up. Now if you know me, I try to NOT have my ladies hanging out. But the icing on the cake was that this came from a lady not wearing a bra, in a very gross and dirty top that left NOTHING to the imagination.

Then there was that time I was going to take the bus to a friend’s place. Well waiting for my bus to show up I somehow managed to get hit on and see a guy take a poop on a bench. Fun fact: Same guy.

Or there was the time that I got called out for being a devil worshiper because I chose to be a redhead. Being a natural redhead, this happens more often than I like to care for. Although this story is the reason one of my good friends and I have the nicknames Spawn and Witness. But I’ll get into that on another day because that needs to be its own post.

Now mind you this is just what has happened to me on the bus, never mind whats happened on the skytrain.

All the best,
Bailey B.