Chance Encounter

Meet us at the camper van place at noon, we had told Kathleen.
Our good friend Kath had arrived in Melbourne while we had been riding with Hypoactive.
None of us knew where this camper van place was or how to get there, but that is where we had planned to rendez vous…on the other side of the world…Down Under. It was here that the Great Aussie Road Trip would commence.
According to the directions we had searched, we just had to ride a few trams and trains across to the other side of the city. How long could that take? Seeing as the route maps looked similar on paper, brightly coloured lines crossing this way and that, I had wrongly assumed that Melbourne trains would be similar to the Toronto subway, trains coming every few minutes. Note the word…wrongly.

In reality, trains came 2 or 3 times an hour, resulting in us being about an hour behind schedule to meet Kath. I was stressing. I HATE being late. And this was beyond late. This was grounds for Kath thinking that we had abandoned her in a foreign city, all alone, dingos starting to circle.

Rob and I raced from tram to train, down escalators, up stairs, out onto platforms hoping to catch just one break. To our amazement, the last train we needed to catch was scheduled to depart in 3 minutes. Phew! We ran to the platform and ushered ourselves onto a car. We stood there catching our breath as the train pulled away. Visions of the dingos began to creep into my mind…couldn’t this train go any faster? Poor Kath, all alone….I could practically see her….wait a second...my brain stumbled over itself…I could literally see her.

There was Kath!

Sitting about half a car length away, on the very same car, of the very same train, pulling out of the very same station….was Kath, with not a dingo insight.

Hey! I called out….you’re late!!