I’ve been doing a lot of biking this summer. I promised myself at least three hours a week and mostly I’ve held to it, but this week I got lazy. So today I figured I had some catching up to do, and I got ambitious. To make a long story short, I ended up at Yorkdale. Tired and sweaty, but I figured I was fine, I’d just take the subway back.

Only, the University-Spadina trains were taken out of service, due to a medical emergency: after one stop, two trains in a row kicked everyone off. Not knowing how long I would be waiting on the increasingly crowded platform, or how many stops south I would have to go before I could find another train, I got back on my bike and hauled myself from Lawrence West to Lawrence Station. Whoops, I forgot that the usual weekend closures are back on. So, it’s more sweat, but down to St. Clair I go. Nope, huge lineup of people transferring from the replacement buses. So, onward to Bloor, which I could have done originally without the detour. Sigh.

When I get to to my stop, I figured at least the buses have bike racks and I can ride the rest of the way. (It never occurred to me to use the replacement buses on Yonge because those are always packed, and I didn’t want to add to that the complication of my bike, racks or no.) The bus loop at Royal York station has been closed for construction for over a year (escalators too — fun!). They say it’ll be open again by this winter, but in the meantime everyone has to walk down Royal York and across Bloor to the street stop. Think I made it? No, there goes my bus seconds ahead of me, even though I was a bad pedestrian and didn’t totally obey the signal. Now my handy smartphone app tells me the next one will arrive in 15 minutes or some other insulting length of time (mind you, this route is part of the ‘ten-minute network’, supposedly guaranteeing that’s the longest possible wait).

Well, I made it home at last, even tireder and more sweaty. And I mean, I’ve lasted this long without a car, while knowing I’m still better off without a monthly payment, to say nothing of the side costs. But any more of this excellent, world-class transit and I’m liable to give myself a heart attack.