It feels like a school at this hour of the day- not the place I go to meet my social quota, run into people in the hallway, and wile away the hours between classes. At 8:30 AM, the place feels like an institute of higher learning.

People walk around in that early morning brain-fog; their eyes have a slightly Asian look; you know, morning eyes. Eyes that don't want to be open quite yet. The halls are quiet, and conversations seem more somber, perhaps because I'm not having any. The 8:30 crowd is not my crowd; if my people are here, I have NO idea where to find them.

This morning is full of down-time. Psych study at 8:30, 10:30, and some elusive online study to do, once I track down the url. Why am I here again? Oh well, I suppose here's just as good a place as any to waste away the morning. I could study. In a place like this, an atmosphere like this one, I almost could. But, let's be real. It's 8:30. I'd likely fall asleep.

The 8 AM bus ride is full of pleasant surprises- the smiling (not yet awake) face of Jonny, the sound of someone calling my name from behind me- a friend from home, and a chance for a quick catch-up conversation. REAL people ride the bus at 8 AM. The mid-afternoon buses are reserved for the slackers and the unemployed, the senior citizen population, and those whose booze cruise from the night before is either just ending, winding up again, or is still in full swing. But not so at 8. At 8 AM, it's all business. Just being there, on the bus, at such an hour makes me feel more productive. Already I pat myself on the back for making it out of bed, out the door.

It's now 9:30. Having completed task A of my ABC's I now have no idea what I do with myself. Thoughts cross my mind on the escalator. At 9:30 AM, I imagine these thoughts to be profound, and I seek out a place from which to share them with the world. It turns out, they are not, but that will not likely be realized until at least noon, when I am awake enough to return to myself. At 9:30 AM, the witty, quippy me is still in bed. Somber, retrospective, strangely awake me is currently presiding.

I have classes today at 2:30 PM, and a lunch date at noon. The day is so empty it echoes. What does one DO on a 9:30 campus, on an 8:30 day? Is there life after bed and breakfast? I'm holding out for the sweet familiarity that will surely hit me around 11AM, aka a reasonable hour to be out of bed and in action. But for the moment, there is nothing to do but to be. here.

And try to make it count for something.

So last night was an epic adventure in the life of Kelly, as I did my first ever stint on CKUW, the University of Winnipeg's radio station. David EisBrenner, a well-known staple on the Wednesday AM edition of The Beat, a news program, was doing his bit for FUNdrive 2007 by covering the Milk Hours (basically CKUW's ploy to get real people to ask you for money all night long instead of playing randomized music). David enlisted the efforts of quite possibly two of his wackiest friends, Jeremy Yuen and myself. David's sister and Jeremy's girlfriend (yes, it's one person) joined us in the studio, the lovely Charisse EisBrenner.

Charisse is the smart one... she came in with no clear intention of speaking on-air. I however, had no idea how the night would go down, other than that there were three mics and one of them was sure to be in front of my face; It may as well not have been.

Anyways... the CKUW FUNdrive is very nearly but not quite over... so call in and pledge now!
FUNdrive continues until Friday afternoon; the goal this year is $38,000 toward the operating costs of running such a great, home-grown and locally-focused station, and as of 6AM this morning CKUW was sitting just over $6,000 away from achieving that goal.... so dig down deep and see if you can find it in your heart or wallet to make a contribution to keeping Winnipeg radio alive and original. I've put my two cents in; now it's your turn!

There are points, I presume for every commuter, when public transit just gets old.

Those points might occur more frequently in a city whose flatness, windiness and all-round coldness is world-renowned.

I reached one such point today.

I should explain:
The onset of winter always makes me somewhat bitter. I can recall with twisted humor my delighted reaction several weeks ago when we recieved our first grand and glorious snowfall; I couldn't wait to get out and frolic in that refreshing blanket of white! And frolic I did! (Subtly, though, on my way to class). But my true colors showed when I left the school that evening, in the darkness of a wintery 7:30, and waited a full hour to catch a bus home, as the roads were a zoo and apparently even the all-powerful Winnipeg Transit can't hack it in a pseudo-blizzard.

I've never claimed to love the winter. I've always maintained that the only thing it's good for is snowboarding. And EVEN snowboarding may not have what it takes to justify four months of this beastliness. Uugh. After a year of escapism in Seattle, this just bites.

Tonight I spent 20 minutes standing on the street corner outside my house waiting for a long-overdue bus. My toes had frozen to the point of painfulness, and my kneecaps had long since ceased shivering and now were unresponsive. I had that inner ache going where you're carrying a bookbag and trying to somehow conserve internal heat, and you tense up a particular set of muscles to the point of irritation.

After 20 minutes of staring oh-so-bleakly up darkened streets, peering into indiscriminate headlights looking for a glimmer of hope, finally a bus arrived. Actually, two buses simultaneously arrived. One was, I presume, the one I'd been waiting for for twenty frostbite-inducing minutes, while the other one was happily on schedule. I picked the latter out of bitterness to the former (and also because it would take me about a block closer to my final destination). A swell of injustice rose in me as I sat down on the bus, realizing that it would take far longer than the 3 minutes of relative warmth I would be recieving from this bus ride to thaw out my toes. I settled for waving and banging my feet around in an attempt to restore vitality or at least basic responsiveness. The trip culmintaned in a straight-legged run (due in part to the unresponsiveness of my kneecaps and in part to the stiffness of my jeans), and a good 5-minute curl-up-in-a-blanket-on-the-couch-and-whine-fest, before assuming the duties of the evening.

Later, after a study pow-wow at my friends' place, I set out to make the return trip. The ever-so-gentlemanly Chris Stein walked me to the bus stop, where I peered around, surveying my options and the likelihood of a bus coming in the near future at 1AM on Pembina. After bidding Chris goodbye, I decided to just walk, gauging that perhaps my legs might freeze slightly less while walking than they previously had while waiting inanimately for a bus.

So walk I did; and it wasn't that bad! It seemed to have warmed up some since my previous trip, and either way, my motivation and longing for home and warmth kept me going.

As I came off the other side of the Bishop-Grandin overpass and neared my apartment, I heard a car slow beside me, and some male voice addressing me. "Oh goody," I thought, "just what a girl needs a block from her house at 1AM on the streets of Winnipeg in the dead of winter.... creepers!" So I tried to ignore this voice, but it re-addressed me and in the end I decided that I would simply have to look over, as the "creeper" was not discouraged.

To my great relief, coasting beside me was not the drunken, lame loser "cruising" in his Chevette that I'd expected, but rather two gentlemen from the Winnipeg police force (on-duty), whose idea of a good Monday night shift is offering chilly young women on foot a ride! I smiled and responded that I was very nearly home, and for the first time that night, I felt warm on the streets of Winnipeg.

I have a feeling that my on-again, off-again love affair with public transit will experience many more ups and downs before this winter is through, but we'll make it out alright. Someone as richly blessed as I am in so many small and large ways can't hold out against my affection forever, and it seems that just when I am tempted to give in and grow cold, get jaded or give up, along comes a little nudge in the right direction, something or someone that brings me just that much closer to being back to my more open-hearted and optimistic self.