Last peaceful walks

We live on a Concession Road where the speed limit is 80 km/h. It’s a Class B road and I’m convinced that the B stands for “Boy, these shoulders are narrow!”. When we get to the corner, we’ll move to a County Road with wider shoulders and slower traffic due to a school.

Jaimie and I are out pounding the pavement every morning. While we try to head for different destinations for our other walks, this is just so convenient. We kick our 14000/28000 steps off the same way every day. Of course, we walk facing traffic. Most oncoming traffic is courteous and will pull over to the left when they see us and some even go right into the other lane to give us a lot of room. It’s great for slushy days.

With the two week Christmas Break and then the stay at home learning for the past couple of weeks, we’ve had a month of very low traffic to contend with. But, we’re anticipating that will change on Monday.

Buses run up and down the concession road to:

• Anderdon Public School
• General Amherst High School
• Stella Maris Catholic Elementary School
• St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School
• St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic High School
• Western Secondary School

That adds up to a lot of buses all running during out walking time frame. In addition to the regular buses, there are also a couple of the shorter buses. Some travel in the same direction as us and some in the opposite direction. We’re forever heading off the pavement onto the gravel or even onto the grass in some spots to give way to traffic. If you’ve ever watched Heavy Rescue 401 and the traffic they endure, we think it’s about the same. Or worse.

The very worst part comes when the bus is going the same direction as us. It’s not the bus that’s the problem; it’s the person right behind the bus who wants to swerve out and pass the bus once the flashing lights stop. Courtesy for the dog and dog walker doesn’t seem to enter their minds. Or maybe they don’t even see us.

Dreaming about his next walk

To make things worse, both concession roads that are parallel to us have been shut down for repairs resulting in even more traffic on our little road. Thankfully, one of the roads is now open but they’ve found bones while doing a bridge reconstruction on the other and that has ground everything to a half. We’re proud of our War of 1812 connections around here and would hate not to preserve them.

So, we’ve had it good for the past month. I can’t remember a walk where we were the only ones out there but the traffic has definitely been lighter. That’s going to change.

All those buses will be back and the challenges that they prevent for all the cars and trucks just ramp it up for us. There will also be a great deal more traffic anyway. In addition to the buses, there are students who drive to the secondary school and then a lot of parents who drive their kids to school. We’re kind of guessing that may increase as some people might be hesitant to put their kids on a bus.

This weekend will be the last of the light days for a while, at least until the next weekend. We will enjoy them.