No Transit Strike Tomorrow...

TTC Strike Averted (Toronto Star)

The subway and the buses will still be running tomorrow, so I no longer have to turn to Plan B or Plan C to get to work.

With the price of gasoline already well above my spending comfort levels, driving to work was Plan C.

Plan B, now that I have a bike, was to cycle the 34K that would get me from home to work and back again.

It certainly wasn't an ideal plan, since I've only spent two hours on the bike thus far, and am still getting used to the clipless pedals. Also, I've only cycled all of five minutes or so in Toronto traffic. The 17K trip each way would have largely been along heavily-trafficked arterial roads. Also, I would have had to deal with cycling the long hills through the Don Valley for the first time.

All of this was pretty overwhelming. To cycle to work now would be way ahead of the learning curve I'd set for myself. To say that I was pretty uncomfortable with this thought would be a complete understatement.

But I really didn't want to waste the gas driving.

So I justified this plan by telling myself that, during a transit strike, vehicular traffic would be slower moving as the roads clogged up, and drivers would have to expect (and thus, I hoped, be looking out for) more cyclists on the road. I figured that would give me a little more leeway.

During the rundown to the strike deadline this evening, I was mentally and physically preparing to cycle to work tomorrow. I mapped out a route to work. I figured out how I was going to carry a change of clothes, shower stuff and all my work materials while biking to work. This afternoon, I was down at the MEC to pick up some extra tubes and a patch kit in case of a flat.

After hitting the MEC, I caught a movie.

Once we finished the movie, Rob and I wanted to grab a beer and a bite to eat, so we made our way over to a pub. The TVs in the pub were tuned to the CP24 new channel. That's where I found out that the TTC and the main union had reached a tentative agreement. No strike tomorrow.

I mentioned this to Rob. Apparently, despite my trepidation with cycling to work, my disappointment was palpable.

It's not a huge thing, since I'll most likely try a couple of bike commutes later on once I get more comfortable, but the transit strike would have given me the perfect excuse to cycle to work without people looking at me like I was a complete weirdo.

If I cycled into work tomorrow, I would have gotten questions, but I could have easily just answered everything with, "Transit strike." When I cycle into work in the future, it's going to require much more explanation than that. We live in such a car culture that the thought that somebody might actually want to bike to work will never have crossed these people's minds.

I don't particularly mind people thinking I'm a complete weirdo.

I just don't want to have to waste time explaining it.