Today was the big day, the day to embark on our journey to London. Today was the to pierce the shroud of mystery and awe, to climb the holy mountain, to scale the walls of the techno-literati citadel. Today was the day Christmas break would truly begin, in true romantic Dickens-plus-modern-wonder style.
Today was the day…but today was the day we missed our bus.
It was my fault. Not completely, but mostly. It was certainly my fault that I left until this morning a few too many odds and ends to tie up, including failing to finish off my food and so making it into massive BLTs to take along. I tend to do that – leaving too many things until the last minute, I mean, although I do a fair share of massive BLT-making as well. Without fail, the final touches of any project take far longer than foreseen, at least for me, because I am that fatal combination of ambition, perfectionism, and optimism.
What wasn’t entirely my fault was that the Megabus ‘station’ (turning out to be an unmarked point on the side of the road) was waaay farther away than it looked like on Google Maps. We counted on fifteen, maybe thirty minutes to walk there from the uni. It ended up taking closer to an hour, and that was lugging our big bags, mine being an oversized carry-on with a bum wheel that would only degenerate over the duration of the trip – in several inches of snow. It was pretty yes, but the scenery didn’t do much to stop our hearts from sinking when we came to an intersection we figured to be about halfway and were faced with a massive hill.
At long last, and me starting to sweat under my ample clothing (including a newly purchased coat I was happy to find could double as an everyday winter coat and a snowboarding jacket, wasn’t too bulky, and came in my favourite colour), we arrive at the top of the hill only to find that we didn’t know which way to go. We’d expected to be at the bus stop by then, but after asking someone and walking on, actually had to walk fifteen more minutes down the road to a much larger intersection. It was at that intersection that we saw our Megabus pulling away. It had even been a few minutes late. It passed right in front of us.
Our slight worry turned to despair, even more so as we called and woke up a flatmate and got him to check the Megabus schedule online, only to find that there were no more buses that day. We began the long walk back.
Graciously, my fellow adventurer was still in good spirits, an attitude he continued to exhibit throughout the whole experience. I admire that. I have optimism, but the perfectionism can be pretty critical, especially when I know something is very much my fault. On the way back, knowing Bradford’s reputation and a story from our other flatmate that he’d heard what sounded like someone trying to break into the halls a few days previously, we joked about the chance of us getting back to find our rooms already burgled. Fortunately, these jokes did not materialise into a significant plot twist for this blog (sorry guys).
Also fortuitously, we were able to cancel our hostel reservations for that night, and purchase Megabus tickets for the next morning, same time. With nothing else to do, we crashed until that evening when we went out with some of the few students who were still in Bradford (well, I say that because that’s what it felt like, but what’s probably closer to the truth is that there were plenty of international students remaining, who might very well remain over the entire break, most of them being, for whatever reason, Chinese, but they kept to their own spaces so the campus felt deserted). I had a whiskey sour for the first time – nice. I had mulled wine for the first time – delicious. I finished some of the food I’d had nothing to do with.
Stark reality v. challenger’s spirit: one-nil.
Inspiration's Waiting Room 