Always look on the bright side...

To explain this I need to go back to a long forgotten time... the end of November. After many discussions Ryan and I decided that to try and save some more money we would sell our car and become transit users.... before people say anything, yes we had thought out the pros and cons of having a baby on the bus and it being the middle of winter on the bus but we're young and felt like we could manage anything. So we put the car up for sale and started busing. We bought our bus passes in preparation for the new month and decided one Friday night to try our first major trip as a family to visit Paige's grandparents. In the car it would be a 30min trip max. For us and the bus on a Friday night it was 2 1/2hrs. No problem. I was out to prove to Ryan that I could do what he thought I could not.... live without a car. The next afternoon our plans had completely reversed and we were now keeping the car as my wonderful husband realised that life would be significantly harder for me, a baby and a pushchair to survive on transit. I know people can and do do it and that's fantastic, but for we who do already have a car, we decided to move some things around and keep it. I have to admit I was extremely relieved!! However now we had another problem. We had spent almost $200 on bus passes for the next month which now we would not get the use out of them to make them worth their money. Now this does make me cross. I hate... HATE spending money on something that you don't use, or paying charges that can be avoided. The one good money habit I have. Which brings us to the second part of our story...

On Dec 10th 2008 all the bus drivers in the city went on strike. We assumed that it might be a couple of days until the issues were resolved. Oh how wrong we were. After 51days of no transit the union and city decided to go to binding arbitration. Now I don't want to get into the politics of this and there's obviously fault on both sides but gotta say, did not agree with the union. So about ten days ago they decided to go back to work with the first buses not on the road yet and full bus service will not be available until April 6th. The buses being on strike... awful. We had -30oC temperatures frequently, in fact in the three months I believe the temperature never went above -10oC. People lost their jobs, students couldn't get to school. Seniors couldn't make doctors appointments. Commuting time went from minutes to hours. Gotta say, extremely glad we didn't get rid of our car. Also the city is refunding Decembers bus passes which means we got out money back.

Maybe there is always a silver lining....