(animation) I Like to Ride The Rocket

***prices have gone up in the time between making this video and posting it***

If you live within the city of Toronto you might have had a few run ins with the good old TTC. When I moved to the city 5 years ago I was coming from a small town where the closest bus station was a good half hour trek, so you could say I was a little excited by the size of the TTC system. I could go from one side of the city to the next within a few transfers. I felt connected.
That feeling went away after a few short weeks. I began to hate waiting at a bus stop. You stand there, look at your watch, look up the road, look at your watch, cross your arms and sigh. Three buses heading the opposite direction go by. Eventually you say fuck it and light a smoke. Then ABRACADABRA the bus pulls up out of nowhere just a few puffs in. Then all the other people push past squeezing in only to then become mindless zombies until their stop has been reached. After a while I decided it would be just as fast to walk to the next stop, check for a bus, then see if i could make it to the next before the bus showed up, then repeat. I would usually make it so close to home that the bus was no longer needed.
I eventually stopped taking the TTC due to inappropriate comments made by one of their drivers, and the misshandeling of the situation by their complaint department. For a month I walked the hour and a half to and from school until finally retreving my old bike from my moms house becoming one of the many Toronto cyclists.
The TTC has had a lot of bad press in the past few months, and I have heard horror stories from people I work with, but I can still remember how I felt those first few weeks of living in Toronto where everything was at my finger tips.