Plan for stops

As a mid-century man it has become obvious that knowing where the public washrooms are on any given route I am required to take through the city is a necessity. I have never actually mapped public washrooms as part of any travel plan, but I believe it would relieve a lot of anxiety around my morning commute to work if I did.

This past week, while on the bus and in absolutely mind numbing leg pounding dire need, I learned that the Tunney’s Pasture transit station has a public washroom. I’ve been transferring through this station for 7 years and I had no idea it had more than buses, trains and a lot of people. I was going to scramble across the street to a Starbucks that my map app told me was there, but I took a holy moment while still in the station to review the you-are-here map hoping for a lucky break. My brain had become so fluid I had trouble identifying the wholly universal iconography for bathroom, even though it was right there in front of me on the board. In the state I was in I mistook the bathroom icon for the one typically used for elevator in an unusual back and forth mental volley (Is it? Isn’t it? It is? Isn’t it?) before locking in with what little sense I had left and why these two images look so similar is a real failure in graphic design during a time of utter emergency.

The bathroom was about as clean as you could reasonably expect a public bathroom in a busy transit station, in March, in Ottawa, to be – and the equipment functioned as expected. I wasn’t stabbed or infected by some previously undiscovered transit station bathroom virus, so that was nice. I consider all of this a win.

Bonus points – I didn’t even miss my train! High five!

Here is a drawing of the large glob of hair that defied sense and gravity by hanging off the corner of the urinal.