Co-written by Rachel Caroline Derrah and Anna Duckworth.

NOVA SCOTIA - Consider this: you've got somewhere to be. But you've got no means to get there. You plan ahead and solicit a drive from someone else. It’s carpooling.

Now, let's say you don't have time on your side. You start walking and en route you solicit a drive from a passing car. This negotiation happens in public. It’s hitchhiking.

Let’s get this straight then, the law struggles with the context in which we negotiate shared transportation, but not the actual act of sharing a ride.

Welcome to Nova Scotia – a small province that boasts almost no means to move from one community to the next. Outside the fortunate few who own cars, Nova Scotians are bound to their backyards by the absence of alternative transportation and infrastructure.

There's no train. There's no efficient carpooling system. But there is a bus. Sadly it runs between only some communities and the infrequency of these trips is crippling.

How about the Lunenburg-Halifax commute. There’s significant traffic between the two communities along highway 103 each day. For commuters who are expected at work by nine AM, the bus renders you about four hours …

HALIFAX -- Some 24 odd months ago construction began on Fenwick Street in Halifax’ South End, the site has fast evolved into a fantasyland for every four-year-old boy – excavators, diggers and dynamite littered the street.

But when workers discovered an unexpected underground river during the early phases of construction, everything stopped.

Here we are, two years later, and my front yard is still a 40-foot canyon. My house still shakes on a daily basis from the dynamite blasts. And my neighbours are still pissed off.

But I’m not. In fact, the workers are threatening to be finished the roadwork by Christmas. And I don’t feel too good about it. I have a routine. Each day I throw the door open. I toss my compost. And I mount my bike to greet the same group of workers out front.

A while back, we began exchanging pleasantries. But today we know each other. They even remark on my absent boyfriend – yes, we broke up. These construction workers have single-handedly woven a new fabric for this little two-block community.

And Alex Duckworth (ya, she’s my sister) and Alexandra Pook are capitalizing on it. They too are shifting perspectives in our hood.

Unemployed …