I feel I should take a second to complain about the busses.

No, not about how they’re always late when you need them to be early and always early when you need them to be late. Or how they’re too expensive. Or how people talk loudly on their cell phones or listen to music without regards for their fellow passengers.

Just the busses in general. Literally. They have completely revamped the bus system in Århus. Starting this week. They say it’s a really good thing and that it will offer better service to the passengers. Can you guess whether I agree or not?

It has nothing to with improving service. It’s all about cutting costs and making a profit. Which is not in and of itself a bad goal. But I get a little tired of hearing how it’s an improvement when they have in fact totally destroyed things for me. I usually used two bus lines. One of them is now gone. The other is redirected and close to useless, for my purposes. So it’s really rather problematic for a visually impaired person like myself.

I used to be able to take the bus in a straight line from the shopping center around the block to my place to my parents’ place to the playground. I used that bus line several times a week. Now it has been redirected. It no longer goes near the shopping center or my parents. Not really the playground either. If I take the bus now then I’ll have to get out and walk through the park to get to the playground. Plus they have changed the frequency of the line. It used to go every 15-20 minutes. Now it goes every 30 minues. While the ‘major’ bus lines go every 7-8 minutes. You only have to wait 7-8 minutes for a bus?! What a great improvement! If you live in central Århus where all the major bus lines go to and fro, that is. Too bad if you live out in the suburbs…

It’s not really a giant problem for me right now. The weather is nice and my back exercises have helped so much that I can walk from my apartment to the playground without being in too much pain. It’s worse when I have to go back. I used to be able to take the bus straight from the playground to the shopping center so I could do some shopping after having spent time with the goats. Now I’ll have to walk through the park, take a short bus ride, walk past my apartment to the shopping center and walk back. After having been out and about for hours that’s not going to be good for my back, especially not when carrying goods from the shopping. So that’s annoying. But it will be even worse when winter comes. That’s already bad because I can’t stand the cold with my poor blood circulation. And of course when the snow and ice comes… well I probably won’t be going to the playground as much when conditions get bad. Stumbling blindly along on ice is not fun. And I’ll have to do a lot more of that with this bus system. It’s like they looked at that plans and thought to themselves “how can we make things as bad as possible for Plume?”. I’m sure that’s how it went down.

It’s also a bother for my dad, who’s always happy to come over and help me with things. Good thing they live so close by.

But it really does suck and it’s a major, major bother and a decrease in quality for me. So if they could shut up about what a big improvement it is, I’d be happy. ier.

I could also complain about the computer, but I won’t. So…
The End.

The weather has been quite lovely lately. There’s still rain now and then but it’s nice and warm also. It’s good for when I ride my exercise bike. When the sun is shining and it’s warm. And I crank up the heat anyway. The sweat literally pours down my body, and it feels really good. I have been making a good effort of that lately, so hopefully I can keep that up.

In goat news, the goats had a little walkabout on Monday. Video: youtube.com/watch?v=P9bGYrvK7z8. Even the grownups were off the leash. That made me happy. Goats should be free. Although they do inevitably get in trouble. Before I left I had to herd them back from an expedition up in the ghetto block. There’s a tiny little patch of grass up there which is apparently a lot tastier than the football pitch full of grass below. I think for goats the grass is indeed always greener on the other side. It doesn’t matter how much juicy, fresh grass there is, they will still slowly migrate and look for more and better things. But it was real good to walk around the premises with them. I wish it could be like that every day. Even if I have to drag them back when they wander out of bounds.

I still think they should hire me as a goat keeper.