For those of you who glanced hastily at the title and anticipated a titillating and possibly even explicit account of my journey prepare to be disappointed. Those of you who know me better will wonder why I was going to Castle Hill in the first place. Well there was a modest bushwalk emanating from that august location so I called upon public transport to deliver me within shouting distance of its start.
The first mode of transportation that my government funded frustration service provided was a bus. It shouldn't have been a bus but the government has recently shut down rail services to my inoffensive suburb while it readies the line for the sexy new metro trains which are soon* to be sweeping along it. To compensate for the lack of trains they have very kindly persuaded a bunch of bus drivers to take batches of desperate commuters from a largely random street near (but not too near) the train station and dump them at Sydenham which is still blessed with rail access.
The buses are rather slick and sexy things, all automated voices and doors that hiss when they open. I love a door that hisses when you open it. There's just one problem, every time I stand up from my seat I bang my head on the roof. This has happened so often now that if I was a footballer I would be sent from the field for a concussion test. Actually if I were a footballer I would be sent from the field due to age, incompetence and general lack of fitness but a concussion test would definitely follow probably on the selector who sent me out onto the field in the first place.
The bus roof doesn't appear to be particularly low nobody, myself included has trouble standing in the aisle but yet the head thumping remains. It's not as though I'm particularly tall, in fact "particularly tall" are two of the words most commonly not used to describe me along with "ruggedly handsome" and "probably sane". I presume the bus has booster seats that project its passengers high into the air and prompt the less observant of their passengers to misjudge the distance between head and ceiling when rising to depart.
Once at Sydenham I fled the concussion bus rubbing my scalp and headed for the metro. Sydenham is where the metro currently ends while they ready the line beyond. A sleek gleaming metro arrives every few minutes to whisk its passengers to other points in Sydney at breakneck speed. In fact its so good that in order to maintain passenger frustration levels at an appropriately high level the planners had to deliberately minimise the number of automatic gates offering entry to the station leading to a raving scrum at the entrance as far too many people attempt to enter and leave at the same time.
Assuming you survive the trip through the entrance gates (children and the elderly were being crushed underfoot as I entered) a very few minutes will see you stepping onto a driverless tube which is simultaneously Sydney's latest transport option and the government's most recent attempt to break the power of the transport union. Inside seats apparently designed to accommodate an anorexic super-model (ie, any of them) have been placed along the walls of the carriage to prevent you looking out. If you have eaten a meal in the last week you will not fit into these seats.
Once the doors slam the metro is off and it has to be admitted it is fast. It zips along its designated track at speeds that leave staid, non-metro trains gasping with envy. The journey is not however entirely smooth. The metro is not a particularly comfortable ride. It bounces and judders quite a bit as it eats up the track. Once the harbour is crossed the juddering increases to the point where at least one passenger was concerned for the fillings in his teeth. It wasn't doing my concussion any good either. Still discomfort is compensated for by speed. In an almost embarrassingly short time I was deposited in Castle Hill ready to commence by bushwalk. The headspins, bleeding ears and sudden inability to see the colour blue were a small price to pay for such convenience.
* "soon" being a relative and flexible term which can mean anything between "tomorrow" and "Never, how dare you even ask you godforsaken peasant. Begone, your presence pollutes my sight!"
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