By: Hana Hoffman, Peak Associate
What if, one day, you can’t find your Compass Card while walking to the bus stop in the morning? After checking every pocket of your pants, jacket, and backpack, you’re sweating as you wonder how you’ll make it to an important class. You have some $20 bills, but buses don’t give you change in return. We’re still living in the Stone Age! Here is a guide to keep in your pocket in case this nightmare becomes a reality.
- Ask an eagle for a lift
Let’s shift our focus from sweater weather to feather weather. Wave your arm up in the air and call over an eagle! Ask for a ride to school in exchange for food, meaning you’d have to buy fish from the grocery store to pay the eagle.
2. Rent a bicycle
Cycling is faster than walking, of course, and the exercise would also activate your brain and get you even more ready to do well in class! You may be going to the bicycle rental shop just because you lost your Compass Card, but maybe you’ll fall in love with cycling and add that to your everyday life cycle!
3. Give Sonic The Hedgehog a call
He’s always there to save the day! Bet you can’t find a single story about him where he’s a villain. The only downside is that he’s very popular and is often fully booked. If he can squeeze you into his schedule, he’ll come dash to you and carry you while running faster than lightning speed so that you travel back to the time before you lost your Compass Card!
4. The secret elevator
This is either a myth or a legitimate fact, but apparently, in the ‘60s, a group of second-year students built a hidden elevator to commute up the mountain more easily. The elevator hasn’t been used ever since they graduated, so who knows if it still functions? Plus, they never told anyone how to get to the elevator through the secret path to the centre of the mountain base (don’t ask me how I know). If you want to try circling around the bottom of the hill to find this mysterious route, feel free to do so.
5. Travel Back to the Future and ride a flying car
That’s the era we’re supposed to be living in, but unfortunately, we still don’t have flying cars in 2024. However, do you know what we do have currently? 3D printers. We can print almost anything nowadays, so just buy a 3D printer and quickly command it to build a flyable car. It doesn’t matter if you’re bad at driving because there’s no traffic in the sky!
6. Be a creepy crawly
You’re a student, still young and flexible. Bring out your inner worm that you spent ages developing when your elementary school teachers were training y’all to become bookworms. Hide in the bush right by the bus stop, so when the bus comes, and someone gets out from the back door, you can sneak in by crawling. If you’re low enough, no one will notice except the person getting off. You probably wouldn’t be seen even through the bus driver’s mirror. Besides, wouldn’t it be considered distracted driving if they’re not focusing on the road?
7. Walk
Walking up to campus will guarantee your daily 10,000 steps, and maybe you’ll be ranked higher than your friends on Strava! This would work out because as you walk, your body will gradually get warmer, and simultaneously, the air temperature will get cooler as you go up the mountain, so you’ll feel perfect the whole way!
8. Attend school remotely
Have we forgotten about hybrid learning? There are many ways to work around showing up to class in person. One, you can video call your classmate and listen to the lecture in real time. Two, you can ask AI to generate a fake image of you looking studious and attentive. Then, your friend can print out the lifesized image of you and put it in a seat in class. Your instructor will mark you as present and probably won’t even notice the extra fingers! Three, look at the lecture slides on Canvas and teach yourself, which I guess is equivalent to skipping. But at the same time, it’s not because you’re still reading the lecture slides!
9. Volunteer to assist the garbage truck until it reaches SFU
Run after the morning garbage truck (you know how slowly they move; you’ll catch them without a problem). Talk to the driver and make a deal: you hop in and do all the work of collecting the neighbourhood’s trash, and after that, the driver drops you off at school. How could they say no to someone who wants to do free volunteer work for them? And you’ll successfully make it to school, so it would be a win-win.
10. SFU “Free Taxi” method
Call SFU Safety & Security and report that you see a wild animal on your way to school. Tell them you feel like you’re in danger and desperately would like a ride to SFU, so that they’ll come get you and drive you to class safely. It’s like a free taxi ride for you, because they’re already getting paid on duty no matter what comes up!
