Cha Gheill Part 1

There are a lot of different ways to get from one place to another. With your body and the help of some equipment you can walk, run, skip, cycle, rollerblade, and even if the mood strikes you, roll to your destination. Further more, you can use bigger forms of transport such as a car.
Cars are a great way to get from Point A to Point B. They're fast, private and have the advantage of having the best audio traveling system available. Only in the car or perhaps a very large room with many speakers can you enjoy your music to the same extent. In a car it surrounds you. However, Cars have the negative aspect of being very costly and bad for the environment. And with the rising cost of fuel cars are becoming a less appealing option everyday.
There is the big long extended car called the Bus. The Bus is a decent way to travel providing you are on a route with many stops and frequent bus occurrences. Going to UWO campus is easy on the bus. However as Kevin, Lyndsey and I discovered on Wednesday night, the bus that goes downtown sucks. I think we waited a good 45 minutes for our bus to come despite the fact it was supposed to come every 1/2 hour. But generally for short distance a Bus is a good option. For long distances I would not recommend it. Although it tends to be the cheapest means of travel it is the least comfortable. Spending your time in the cramped seat of a hot bus with lots of other hot smelly people doesn't really make for a great trip.
And for long distances there is of course the airplane. The airplane is great for traveling really far. As unlike the above options it gets you far faster. Say you were going to Vancouver (one of my favourite places to go), it's the difference of 3 days versus 4 hours.
Now you're probably wondering what this large preamble is about. Well it brings to my favourite form of transportation for going long distances. The train. The train, despite it's slightly higher costs is a great way to travel, at least in Canada. The train is properly air conditioned, the seats, even in the lower classes are comfortable and not squished together and they tilt back. Everybody gets a reading light and a private fan. It just seems like the classy way to travel. It's a mix of business and pleasure. The train is one of the few forms of transport where you can get work done, or enjoy a casual read, and if all else fails, look out the window and watch the scenery pass you by. A large part of the train route between London and Toronto is still un-encumbered by people and so you spend a large portion of the trip whipping through fields and forests. The train also evokes a certain romantic sentiment. I don't know but I think the railway has a great human connection. So much of our lives since the dawn of industry have been intertwined with the train. As we move towards a global civilization, the train is a great artifact of the way in which Humans are able to conquer vast distances and connect people. And as a Canadian I feel like the railway is part of my blood. Which sounds stupid cause I know railways are everywhere. But when you sit on the tracks and you watch the forests whip by, it makes you feel a connection to people who have traveled those routes for years.
Which leads me to the last bit of this: The reason I've been traveling by the means above today (except for the airplane): I'm going to homecoming in Kingston this Weekend! YAY QUEEN'S!
Stay tuned on Sunday for my post-homecoming blog entry!
Same blog time, same blog channel.