Rant- The City of Calgary Encourages Drunk Driving .

Take a second to imagine this situation: It's 2:30am, and you've just been asked to leave the bar where you were drinking all night. You step outside into a cold -20 winter evening, which feels even colder since you've been gallivanting around a hot sweaty bar for the past three hours.

 Since you know you're clearly too drunk to drive you think "Let's catch a cab, I'll get my car in the morning". This is an excellent responsible decision, pat yourself on the back. Only there's one problem...You can't catch a cab! Only a few cabs seem to be in the vicinity, and none of them are vacant. To add to this problem every other bar on the street has just asked all of their inebriated patrons to leave as well, leaving a slew of freezing cold drunks littering the streets.

You find it strange that there is such a high demand, yet no cabs around to capitalize. Why is that? The City of Calgary allows there to be a limit on the number of cab licences available, allowing Checker and Associated Cabs to have pretty much all of them. The effect of this is that every time the demand for cabs is even moderately high, it becomes next to impossible to find one. Calgary should increase the number of licenses and allow competition in the cab industry to ensure everyone can be served.

You've now come to terms with the fact that you're not going to catch a cab, so you start to think of other alternatives. "We could just take a bus, or train". Once again you can pat yourself on the back for thinking of a great alternative to drunk driving. However, there is another problem; you can't take public transit, because it doesn't operate at 2:30am. Calgary should recognize this issue and at the very least have the train and/or major bus routes operating later on the weekends.

So, you can't get a cab, you can't take transit, how are you going to get home? Walk? Too bad you live in Mackenzie Town/Hawkwood/Temple/any of the eighty-zillion communities that have been contributing to the terrible urban sprawl problem. If you did walk home you'd get there at about 8am, assuming you didn't freeze to death on the way.

 Your only two choices are to freeze to death or get in your car. You could just simply sit in your car with the heat on until there is an opportunity to get home in a responsible manner, but then you might get charged with a DUI anyways. You know you probably shouldn't be driving, but all that alcohol has clouded your judgement, and it's making you feel a little bit better about making risky decisions. You already thought of all the responsible alternatives and none of them are presently a viable option. The only option left in front of you is driving under the influence, and you can thank the City of Calgary for that.

Don't worry though, the city and province has spent millions of tax dollars on ensuring they catch you, and prosecute you to the full extent of the law, because you're an irresponsible criminal. If the government REALLY wanted us to not drink and drive, don't you think they would put more money into prevention? Better transit or cab service? It seems to me that they are much happier to assist in causing the problem, so they collect the fines from all the people who have been stuck in this predicament.

Typical.

I have a tendency to be late for everything, particularly classes at this school. This semester has been no different than any semester prior regarding my habit of tardiness. In fact I was late to the semester all together, missing the first week for vacation, and causing my first day in this class to be last Wednesday.

 To my surprise I managed to make it to my first class a whole seven minutes early! I was quite proud of myself, I felt very organized that day. As I waited for class to begin I noticed the other students in the class pulling out textbooks. I thought to myself "I didn't see anything about textbooks in the outline...uggghhh now I need to buy ANOTHER textbook?! " 

After waiting the seven minutes for the class to begin, a woman walked into the room, stood at the front, and asked who had missed the first day, so naturally I raised my hand. Then I had another epiphany, "I'm pretty sure I read on blackboard that the instructors name was Charles....this lady does NOT look like a Charles to me...perhaps the instructor changed." 

The lady at the front of the room continued to talk about how this class would not be an easy one, lots of reading to stay on top of, and many large papers to write. "This woman is awful! This is only a GNED course! Why does she have to be so hard on us?! And why are we having to read so many books in a class called 'writing in a digital context'?! This is going to be a nightmare!" 

She continued to explain the class and then it finally dawned on me, "I am DEFINITELY in the wrong class right now...." 

"So now what do we do, self? I need to formulate an escape plan...I don't want to be rude...but I can't just stay here... and now I AM late for class...I'm really blowing it right now."

Once I had casually gathered my belongings I leaped up and darted out of the room as fast as possible, eyes shot towards the ground. After the 4 seconds that felt like a lifetime I reached the door and was free of my embarrassment. Once I made it outside I realized that my absentminded nature must have kicked in on my way to class, because I clearly just walked into the first computer lab, with no regard whatsoever to what number was written outside of the room. I walked down the hallway another thirty feet and found EA2067, an easy task once I exited the other realm my brain transcends to regularly. So there I was, walking into my first class ten minutes late...typical.

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