Nottawa

I have worked 99 hours in the last two weeks. Not a personal record--that'd be 110 hours, done back when I was young and strong--but right up there. And it's been a trying two weeks. I'd like to detail why. Someday, when I have an entirely different job and am safe from any reprisal, I may do just that. Suffice it to say that three times in the past pay period I've reached what I thought was the end of the rope, and commenced to swing on it for a while. It seems to have held my weight, which is a good thing: there's not much of a safety net down there.
(And Eva? She's worked 121 hours in the same period. Not even her record, either: she's done 130. Makes me look like a part-timer.)
Holidays are a scant three weeks away. The Ottawa vacation has been scuttled in favour of this new (to us) computer. I'm not altogether upset, even though this marks the third such scuttling. Right now, a vacation involving anything other than laying in bed like a slug smacks of too much work. We'll be mostly sticking close to home. This will be the first two-week vacation I've ever taken, and by God I need it.

I remember the last trip I made to Ottawa, back in 1986. It was a grade eight school trip, and not entirely free of its own stresses.
We stayed at a Holiday Inn that no longer seems to exist. Everyone else slept four to a room; yours truly did everything short of throwing a tantrum to avoid that fate. I can't even remember what bothered me so much about the prospect, but it was probably the fact there weren't three other people in my whole grade eight cohort who didn't bother me. Somehow--parental intercession was required--my wish was granted and I got to room with the other grade eight reject. His name was Jonathan, and we were best friends over that four-day span, sharing the pain of the outsider.
If I could sum up Ottawa in one word from that trip, the word would be "wet". I'm not sure it ever stopped raining over that entire trip. Sometimes it misted; at least once it hailed. I made a rookie travelling mistake I haven't repeated since and hopefully never will: I forgot to pack anything resembling a sweater. How cold can it be in Ottawa at the end of May?
Pretty freakin' cold, as it turns out.
We had a pretty good time over the first three days. I remember that much, although the details of what exactly we did have faded into oblivion.
The final day of that trip I will never, ever forget.
We were up before dawn so as to check out of the hotel at seven. I took one look at the bus that was supposed to take us to Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg and laughed out loud. The only way we'd fit on that thing was if we left all our luggage behind. Some rather frantic calls were placed and a just-slightly-bigger bus lumbered into view three-quarters of a very wet hour later. It was mighty cosy: three to a seat. Half an hour later I couldn't feel my butt.
UPPER CANADA VILLAGE: I was thoroughly enchanted with this place, despite very limited time there. It's a fully functioning town circa 1860: so entertaining you forget how educational it is. I had an early lunch there I still recall with fondness...I ordered a bowl of veggie soup and a 'ploughman's special': what came out for my six bucks was a cauldron of hearty, delicious soup and a platter of meats and cheeses: more than I could eat, and I could eat a whole hell of a lot back then...my metabolism was in perpetual overdrive.
From there the day went south in a hurry. Or rather, it was supposed to, and didn't.
We had to be on the bus at 12:30 sharp in order to make our train connection in Kingston. Everyone was told to be back at the bus by then or it would leave without them.
You can guess what happened, can't you?
At twenty to one I loudly wondered why we couldn't just go, already. I was young and naive: I believed that if you were told to be somewhere at a given time, you were there at the given time, lest you be left behind. My adult self realizes the school board would have had its ass sued off; the anal child within insists that abandonment would have been our three musketeers' just desserts.
At 12:55 our group was whole again and the bus high-tailed it for Kingston. We arrived at the train station about fifteen minutes after I lost all feeling in my butt once more...and about thirty seconds after our train to Toronto pulled out. We actually saw the damned thing receding in the distance.
A vote was held: tie the three musketeers to the tracks? It was a close vote. Nobody could think of a knot secure enough, and so they lived.
Now what?
Why, we did the only thing we could do: we clambered back onto our cosy bus and rode to Toronto.
Or at least to Pickering.
That's where the engine conked out. Apparently we were out of gas.
We managed to get out of the flow of traffic and onto the shoulder of the 401. Luckily, we weren't far from an interchange--I think it was White's Road--and the bus driver walked up the ramp with a gascan.
Neither gas station at the top of that hill sold diesel fuel.
The driver used his CB to summon help. Remember, this was '86, long before every kid on the bus could have whipped out a cell phone. It wasn't long before a white car came over the horizon with a thimbleful of diesel: enough to get us to a gas station a couple of interchanges further along.
So we pulled in there, the driver switched off his ignition, pumped his gas, got back in, turned the key...
...nothing.
Not even a grrr. Out of the bus, anyway. There were plenty of grrrs all around, and I learned some new words that would stand me in good stead dishing out insults years later. At least one of them came from a teacher. But the bus just sat there and absorbed all the verbal abuse we could throw at it.
A vote was held: lock the three musketeers in the bus, drench it in diesel fuel, and throw a match? It was a very close vote. The risk of collateral damage dissuaded prospective arsonists.
I never did learn what that problem was--in hindsight, I'd assume a dead battery--but we hung around that gas station foralmost three hours before our bus was up and running again. By then we had, of course, missed the train from Toronto to London.
By now we had passed through shellshock into a state of numb acceptance. If the bus had suddenly gone airborne and hit a flying pig, we would have pork for supper. But we were resigned to never getting home.
Oh, and my numb-bum was rapidly disgorging yellowjackets, which proceeded to sting every inch of both cheeks.
We pulled into London just after 9:30 p.m., and--irony of ironies! because of a train derailment near Brantford, we actually beat the train home by a few minutes.
If we had been just a tad older, I'm sure there would have been babies born nine months later--it was that chummy on the bus. As it is, that day ranks as my worst travel experience ever.