The good ferry

Ok, this post has nothing to do with The Cancer and everything to do with me and Joel finally Getting Ours.

So, even though I know several people in real life who work for BC Ferries who are not idiots, I remain convinced that BC Ferries is entirely staffed by idiots.  I mean, there has to be a system that just isn't being used, right?  They aren't supposed to load us all on the ferry willy-nilly?

And very little of my beef is with the wait times.  We've only ever once in life (before last weekend) gotten to the ferry when it was sufficiently non-busy that there were no sailing waits.  We are always on the next ferry but one, or the next but two (once on the next but four) and that's fine.  We bring homework.

But when the car in front of you is the last one on the previous ferry, it is RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND when you are not the first one on the next ferry (after the reservations, I mean.  And the bikes.  And the oversized vehicles).  This is not rocket science OR brain surgery.  Can you not leave a different-colored cone in front of the line where you left off, so that you remember and don't start loading two lines to our left so that we almost don't make it on this one either?

I also have beefs with the process of filling the ferry left-to-right (one car here, and then you go next to him here, and you can go here) instead of just filling a line and then filling the line next to it, but I feel like I'm not explaining this well and I will have a hard time articulating why this is simultaneously inefficient and unfair.

Moving on to the part where we win.  So, my mom offered to ferry us over for Thanksgiving weekend, and buy us a reservation so that we could stick around for the actual dinner part of Thanksgiving and still catch the 9 coming home.  All day Friday things were going pear-shaped at ye olde ferrie terminal because one of them was out of commision, and then apparently Saturday morning as well.  But by the time we got to the terminal at 1:45, there was nothing but crickets and we drove straight onto the 2.

Victoire!  But then also, on the way home with our reservation we got to board first (durrr) and though we should have been off in the last quarter (due to the left-to-right loading procedure), enmeshing us in serious ferry traffic, we were blocking the motorbikes and had to be loaded off first.  Zoot!

I feel triumphant.  I ALSO feel like we've used up all of our good transit karma for the year, and as such we will not be coming home again until Christmas.  I want to ride this come-uppance for a while.