Free Rider…

I am a good kid – I don’t usually live on the dangerous side, and anyone that knows me will know that I tend to play by the rules. Well, that was all true until this morning. After a disappointing weekend, which I won’t go into detail about now, team international had to make its way across the city for our 9am lecture. What is normally an unadventurous and easy task turned out to be quite the opposite. We made it a few stops on the U-Bahn when it occurred to me that I had forgotten my wallet at my apartment – meaning I had also forgot my transit pass. I figured I was ok for class since I never get stopped. But of course, no sooner had I realized this then I was coming up the escalator to switch lines, and there, right in front of us, we spot the transit police decked out in their florescent yellow vests at the gate checking everyone’s passes. Jordan and I saw them and turned right around – going back down the escalator, back on the train for another stop where we could get off and buy a ticket. You also have to be tricky with these guys since someone of them are easily identifiable, and thus easy to avoid, but there are also others that go undercover and can creep up to you completely un-noticed. This was our concern as we made our near narrow escape – we knew an undercover could be anywhere just waiting for us at this point… I was pretty worried since I figured because I had no id on me I would be arrested for sure, and the Canadian Embassy probably wouldn’t be open that early… I wasn’t in any sort of mood this morning for an International crisis. But alas we did make it to the next station and were able to fulfil our ticket buying operation. So, now, with our tickets in had we jumped back on the train and headed back to the station in question so we could transfer to the line to get to our class. With all the drama we encountered, we actually made it to class only a surprisingly 30 minutes late! What we found amusing was our Prof was talking about the concept of a free rider soon after we arrived… Definition: see Jordan and I – or we at least made a solid attempt to be!

By the way, yellow is now my least favourite colour!

Of all the days I could have forgotten my pass, I of course have to forget in on the one day they actually check them! We’ll see how soon I make that mistake again!