In the last instalment of The Big Commute - a five-part series looking at the vagaries of getting to work every day - The Gazette's Randy Gates writes about his daily commute from Hochelaga Maisonneuve by bike, car and metro.
I hadn't taken the metro to work in years. I get on it maybe three times a year.
So taking it to work every day for a week in this commuting experiment was an interesting lesson in personal space.
One night, it turned into a lesson in Humanity 101, too.
Biking in for a week was great.
I'd always wanted to try it, and there's a freedom and a solitude in biking. And driving in - well, that's what I do every day to get from my home in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, just south of the Olympic Stadium, to the Gazette advertising office at Peel and Ste. Catherine Sts.
Just me, alone, in my car.
It was the metro that was the eye-opener. The metro is full, really full, of people, and you just can't avoid them.
I'd get on at rush hour, 7:45 in the morning, and there was no avoiding it - enforced interaction. Pushing, shoving, people hugging poles, people leaning on you, backpacks digging into you.
Still, it was a quick and efficient trip: I'm a seven-minute walk from Pie IX metro station, a direct line to work, 10 stops, I'm there.
Same thing getting home, leaving downtown at around 6 in the evening.
Until the Wednesday night of this particular week in mid-September.
I'd gone to an exhibition Canadiens game at the Bell Centre, and it was about 10 p.
m. when I walked into Peel station and sat on a bench at the east end of the platform. A young guy who was very inebriated - drunker than drunk - plopped down right beside me, almost on top of me.
I don't like this, I thought. I'd started the day at 7 a.m.
, I was tired, I just wanted to get home without any trouble. I got up and moved farther down the platform.
I heard some yelling, but I ignored it.
And then the man was right beside me, towering over me, 6-foot-something, slurring his words and speaking in very heavily accented English I wasn't understanding very well. Something about bald. Me being bald.
Me wanting to be with other bald people. Okay, yes, I'm bald. What is your point?
I was treading carefully. I didn't know what this might turn into.
Then he took off the baseball cap that was holding his chin-length hair in place, and showed me the widow's peak at his hairline.
It seems he thinks he's losing his hair. I was somewhat relieved, and a bit baffled.
"You're not going bald," I told him.
That opened the floodgate and it turned out there was no intended aggression here, he was just really drunk and really wanted to talk, even though he didn't speak very good English or very good French - I think he was East European - and I was still having a problem following him. He was just a drunk guy having a really rough day.
The train came, we got on, he sat beside me, he kept talking.
Wars, religion, people. And then the conversation went in another direction, a more personal direction: He got into my business suit, about how I must be important. He got into his accent, about how I must think he was stupid.
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