I missed my bus sort of on purpose this morning. I was having a really mellow morning and by my leave time of 7:20 I was still in my pjs! I decided that this was going to be my first day of attempting to drive to work and that I could use up my last bus tickets Thursday or Friday.

Getting to New Westminster was extremely easy, with just a few slowdowns, but I once again got confused by all the construction. I’d looked at a map ahead of time knowing that Majel would be useless once downtown, but I still got led astray onto a side road that took me straight through the downtown core, past my parking lot and my office building. It took forever (or so it seemed) to get turned around and back onto the correct street. Once there, the parking lot was easily accessible and finding a space was painless as there was tons available right near the inbound ramp. Getting to work, driving around in circles not included, took about 45 minutes door to door, 15 minutes less than taking public transit.

This evening, I followed the ‘exit’ signs in the parking lot until I got to what looked like the off ramp. But there was a great big arrow telling me not to turn right there and to keep going straight. I did so and got to the end of the lot, where I had to execute some ‘fun’ manoeuvres to get myself turned around. I was really confused as to how to get out of there and followed the exit signs right back to that turn off where I realised that the sign telling me not to turn right was actually mis-oriented!!! So, that was the exit and, conveniently enough, it led to a one way road, making a left turn onto a busy road a piece of cake. I followed the highway signs to get onto the freeway, laughing as Majel got so confused that she just shut up and let me figure things out for myself. I got home in 38 minutes, compared to the 70+ from public transit!

(Never in my life would have have thought/dreamed/believed/imagined that I would one day have to commute a route for which the last stretch is to follow the signs marked Seattle!)

In other news, Translink called me today to ‘apologize’ for the bus not showing up on Friday, giving the usual excuses of weather (not an issue that day), traffic (not an issue that day), bridge closure (no reason for it to affect that route), etc. I’m still not impressed.

While I’m working very hard at trying to find a way to support myself on the road that would not involve commuting to an office, this assignment is thus far proving itself to be enjoyable and an acceptable way to fund the next part of my journey. I hope that things do not degenerate as they did last fall. 🙁