Posted from the train

I haven’t taken the train in ages. There isn’t an easy train you can get straight from Kitchener to Belleville and back (unless you want to get up very early morning and wait a couple hours in Toronto). It takes about three times as long to get home, taking delays into account, and costs about twice as much as driving (if you don’t take the cost of owning the car into account).

My mom insisted, too. It’s winter, and the weather can get pretty crappy. And since I’m going to be making the same trip back a week from now, it seemed like a good idea.

Before I got a car, I took the train home all the time. I checked my VIA frequent traveller reward thing and apparently I can get a one-way ticked to Kamloops just on points. Not that I would, of course. I’ve done that trip before. Three days on the train is pretty hard on the ass.

Sometime in the last five years, they put WiFi on the trains, and little outlets by all the seats. So I can get online and talk to people and post blog posts and all sorts of stuff. I can’t do that when I’m driving. It’s not the greatest connection, particularly since I’m connected through the VPN to work for safety’s sake, but it works, and I can check RSS feeds and stuff. YouTube eludes me, but I can live without that.

Where are we? I think we’re just leaving Oshawa… I can see the suckers on the 401 from here.

Actually, traffic’s really good.

2 thoughts on “Posted from the train”

  1. Nifty!

    That’s cool!

    (And given the snow in place for today… The train was probably much appreciated.)

    I’m starting to get visions of people being always connected (cell phones, on-the-spot WiFi, etc.) Neat, but scary…

  2. We’ve got wi-fi on some of our city buses, now. And our entire downtown core is one big hot spot (called the “hotzone”), has been for over three years. You have to register to use it, and there is a per-day time limit, tho’.

    You don’t want to go to Kamloops? But, they have a hockey team and everything there! lol! Actually, my daughter may have a chance to play there this spring, although I doubt we’ll be pursuing that opportunity.

    Nothing against Kamloops, tho’…

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