On Wednesday I was planning to bus to the supermarket where I knew the coffee was on special and where I could also buy a couple of other items that weren't available in my nearby supermarket. However, a timely online shopping coupon from Countdown got me thinking and I ended up ordering all my shopping online and also having it delivered on the same day. The price for delivering, if you took the coupon into account, was only $1.25 - much less than the bus fare would have been. What's more, I was able to purchase more than I could carry home. I was careful to stick with necessities and bought a few of some of the items that were on special. When I do a calculation at the end of the month, it will give me a better idea of whether online shopping is a good idea for us. One thing I know for sure, the fresh produce seems to be of higher quality than that available to those who shop in the store. I also received two free products - both of which I was pleased about.
However, I did use the bus service later in the day. My daughter and I usually drive to volleyball on Wednesday afternoons, and this would be our biggest challenge so far. The games are held in far north Hamilton and we live in far south Hamilton. We had a choice of buses, both involving two trips each way. To arrive by 4.30pm, I knew we had to catch our 3.15pm bus. Fortunately, my daughter's high school finishes earlier on a Wednesday, which made that possible. We got off that bus at the Hillcrest Warehouse in order to transfer to the Orbiter. I suspected that this was about the same time that my son would be arriving at the same spot to make his transfer and I was right. He was a little surprised to see us sitting at the bus stop when he arrived and it was good to see him before we went our separate ways. The orbiter duly arrived and I followed our progress on the map, much to my daughter's annoyance. People don't do that! It was a route I had never travelled, and I was interested in where it would take us on the way to our destination.
The most interesting factor was that we had to stop for large numbers of high school boys, including those from my son's school. My daughter described it as "swimming in a sea of Lynx" - referring to the overwhelming male body spray that accompanied the passengers. In my teenage days the boys all smelled of a product called Brut. Not much changes. Somehow they all managed to pile on board and find spaces to slot themselves into. It was a bit like packing too many clothes into a suitcase but, fortunately, we had a great seat and merely had the joy (!) of watching and listening.
There was a very small number of girls from the local Diocesan high school at the front of the bus, and these creatures were obviously the cause of some fascination to the adolescent males on board. I resisted the urge to explain that "Hey Dio Chick!" wasn't likely to produce the desired result and felt pleased that my own high school aged daughter was suitably chaperoned! We overheard some interesting snippets of conversation which were mainly centred around supposedly gayguys and hot girls. One classic I overheard went something like this:
"That dude's gay."
"Yeah, I know."
"No, I don't mean that. I just meant the way he texts."
We arrived at the volleyball on time and 90 minutes later, it was time to repeat the journey. My bus timetable came in handy as I plotted our route, using a different bus to get into the city centre before catching our bus home. That all went very smoothly apart from having to run for the bus when I miscalculated the positioning of the next bus stop. All in all, it did make for a long day and my daughter was understandably tired, but I did enjoy all aspects of the experience and only occasionally felt the lack of a car.
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