Today was a therapy day, so you know what today’s blog entry will be about.

Or do you? While today’s therapy session was fruitful and fun, the tale I will tell now will largely be the tell of how I got there and back, and what happened on the journey.

First, some background. The reason there is a tale to tell in the first place is that my roomie Joe, who usually drives me to and from my weekly appointments (praise be to the Joe, for he is an awesome guy), work for the local schools as a janitor, and therefore is working a different shift than his usual graveyard shift this week while the little ones are off having Spring Break.

(Yes, that means it is officially Spring now, no matter what the calendar says. I know it’s Spring, because I got my first Slurpee craving of the year today. )

Anyhoo, Joe was (and is) working a 7:30 am to 4 pm shift instead of his usual 10:30 to 6:30, so he could not possibly drive me to the usual 8:15 am appointment. But, being the heckuva guy he is, he did give me $20 towards taxi fare.

As it turns out, the cab ride was $24.30. Almost $25 just to get to the other side of Richmond! Can you believe it? No matter how long I live, I will never get used to how ridiculously expensive taxi rides are here in the Big City. In Summerside, where I grew up, you can still get anywhere in town for a flat $3.25, and it’s bigger than Richmond (though it has way fewer people).

Heck, I remember how mad people were when they raised the price from $2.75 to $3.50! People were lining up in City Hall (then Town Hall) to complain. There was nearly a riot. And the beauty of a flat rate system is that it rewards the cabbies for serving as many people as possible, which means they have a strong incentive to get you there as fast as possible, as opposed to this meter bullshit, where their incentive is just to keep you in the car as long as possible.

But enough of my parochial bellyaching. So I ordered up the cab, and was slightly surprised when a minivan showed up. Or maybe it was an SUV or whatever. I don’t know the difference.

Anyhow, I wasn’t complaining. Yay, leg room! My driver was an affable East Indian fellow, very relaxed guy, who was enjoying a breakfast of fresh fruit and what smelled like figs rolled in rice with some kind of curry. It smelled pretty good, honestly.

That adventure ended, I was at therapy. I was early (hard to time the cab thing) and it was a very unpleasant cold morning, but luckily, the building and the office were open so I did not, as I had been fearing, have to wait outside. Phew! That would have sucked.

As it turns out, my therapist was late. I didn’t care, because I had a book to read. Persistence of Vision, a short story collection by John Varley. Good stuff…. reminds me of Heinlein.

After therapy, though I sort of tried to stop myself (not really), I wandered over to the nearby Denny’s to reward my intrepidity with a nice lunch. I ended up having a club sandwich with fries and gravy, which is a Classic Meal in my personal gustatorium.

Afterward, I just had to find the bus. This turned out to be a little harder than I thought it was going to be based on my earlier research. I ended up having to hike the whole kilometer back to the intersection at Shellbridge Gate and Cambie. Stupid highway overpasses and their being a place where you would have to be a lunatic to put a bus stop there.

But get there I did, working off a tiny portion of lunch I suppose, and manage to catch the bus I was looking for, the 410 Railway. (I include the details specifically for you transit buffs.) I asked the guy if he could announce me stop. D’oh number one…. all the buses announce their stops automatically in a slightly creepy neutral female computer voice now, and have done so for like five years. I had completely forgotten. Shows how little I use Transit these days. All these years of getting driven places by Joe have dulled my public transit instincts!

So anyhow, after getting on the bus, I added D’oh 2 to the drivers’ opinion of my mental fitness by freaking out and pulling the stop request cable when I saw Francis Road go by. Wait, that’s my street! I must have missed my stop! Nuuuuu!

But no, my stop was on 1 Road, the cross street to my intersection, and I had to do the Walk of Shame and tell the driver that I had requested the stop in error.

Technically, I could have just played stupid (a part to which I have a natural inclination) and looked around when we stopped for whatever idiot pulled the cord when they are not getting out, but I am compulsively honest and responsible and I never could have lived with the guilt.

Anyhow, I get out at 1 and Williams, and then, duh, I get on the 401 in the direction I am usually going when I get on the 401, but that’s the wrong choice this time and I am in Steveston before I realize it. D’oh number 3! Really, it’s a wonder I have lived this long.

But it’s no big deal, I just took the next 401 headed in the right direction. We live not far from Steveston, so it was just matter of going the wrong way for like six stops then back the right way for like twelve. I still felt dumb whe I got back to 1 and Williams though.

And so I made it home, eventually, colder but wiser, and thus ended my epic trek.

You know, given how goofy and clueless I am, it is a darn good thing I am cute.

Otherwise, there is no way anyone would be able to put up with me. Truly, I am the wacky sidekick in the grand sitcom of life.

I am Kramer.