Bottles and bus stops

09/11/2014, 2:50pm. Bus stop. Sun-induced heat. Bus is due but has not arrived. Lack of water bottle.

 

Tension builds.

09/11/2014, 3:05 pm. Bus arrives - on the other side of the road, completing its route from the city. I suppose this means it will soon come around again to this stop and finally "arrive".

Really wishing I'd brought my water bottle.

09/11/2014, 3:15 pm. Bus still has yet to "arrive", despite the fact that I saw it across the road ten minutes ago, and it only comes once an hour, said hour supposedly beginning and ending every ten minutes to the hour. Why is it late? Did I miss an automated text? I do not possess this information. 

The information that I do possess is that this bus should have arrived at 2:50pm, as it clearly states on the timetable. We don't even have a digital timetable here; we only have one of the plastic ones skewered on a pole. That is also information I have ready-to-hand. 

I have decided that, at this point, the next bus is due in half an hour anyway ("due"), so I may as well risk going back to the house and getting my water bottle.

09/11/2014, 3:22 pm. It has been four minutes since I returned with my water bottle, and the bus has now finally arrived, after standing for half an hour in anticipation of said arrival. 

As I board, I wonder if this crisis might have been averted if my facebook profile was public rather than private, if I allowed Google to track my location, if I had made myself more accessible, allowed myself to be fully encapsulated by the various arcane algorithms and unexplained profit margins that enclose my position within the traffic of the social network. If only I had embraced ubiquity more fully.

Wherever ubiquity is, it's not on my bus route.