The Worst Commuting Day of the Year

During my 23 years of commuting, St. Patrick's Day has always been the worst commuting day of the year. The morning ride was never too bad, but the evening has generally been a roller coaster ride through loud, boorish behavior; tense drunken arguments about the cut of someone's jib which ended up in fisticuffs as often as not; and teetering aisle stumblers in a hopeless quest for the restroom who occasionally hurled on some part of me or my belongings. Not today!

This morning was uncharacteristically rough. The train ride itself was uneventful, but once on the platform and into the maw of Grand Central Terminal, large (REALLY large) crowds of people were swarming around. Hundreds and hundreds of people in a sea of green attire, shiny beads, and oversized leprechaun hats taking over the main hall like a silly and ridiculous version of Tahirir Square. Most of the revelers seemed to be good natured and not yet too inebriated, but some were clearly intent on wrongdoing in spite of the clumps of dressed-up police officers and firefighters heading for the parade. It was very loud and very tense, and the pit of my stomach tightened up to prepare for my fight-or-flight response. Between the train platform and the subway entrance, I witnessed 3 assaults and 2 pickpocketing attempts and several instances of menacing and destructive behavior. I was never so happy just to make it to the subway.

Throughout the day I found myself wondering how bad the ride home might be. Surely if the morning was bad, the evening would be worse, and as I left the subway and headed into the terminal my heart began to race. As I turned the corner into the main hall beyond the secret Oyster Bar entrance, I assumed I would encounter something close to a riot. Instead it was nothing. Nothing. Mostly tired commuters going about their business with small groups of exhausted revelers trying to find their trains. I made my way to my train, with only 3 minutes to spare, and I figured it would be jam-packed with stinking drunk hooligans ready to slug me in the jaw and puke on my shoes. Instead it was nothing. Just many people dressed in green, a few obviously tipsy, and the usual asshole trying to beat the conductor out of the peak ticket upgrade. But that was it....

So the worst commuting day of the year was by far NOT the worst commuting day of the year. I will reserve that honor for the month of January when every day after the first big snowstorm was the worst commuting day of the year. I cannot really understand or explain this morning. A work colleague from New Jersey told me it was exactly the same at Penn Station. Perhaps it was a combination of a really beautiful day in NYC which drew so many people combined with our collective anxiety about the horrors in Japan, Libya, Egypt and Bahrain. I don't know. Tonight I am just a simple commuter who is happy to have dodged a bullet on the worst commuting day of the year.

Captain Bringdown

Its February vacation for Connecticut schools and there are lots of families on the trains this week heading into the Big Apple for some R & R. Queuing up for the exit this morning, a mom with two young teen daughters in tow suddenly turned to me and said "Why does everyone look so somber on this train?" Geez Louise, I said to myself. Did you ever pick the wrong stranger to fire up a chat with! "Because we're Commuters," I answered. "We do this every day. Look around (at the filth). Take a deep breath (of the stench). You might be able to ignore all this stuff on your yearly fun outing into the city, but after a while I am certain you would conclude that there is nothing to be happy about here."

The daughters rolled their eyes in unison.  "There goes mom," I imagine they were thinking, "picking out another depressing loser to befriend on public transportation."

"Okay then," she replied, sensing that lizard brain Mother-Daughter connection, "Can you tell me how to get to Rockefeller Center?"

And so it went, vanishing as quickly as it appeared, my chance to be a positive and constructive ambassador for the choo-choo train.  Was it a test?  Did I pass?  I don't know.  What do you think?

Friday Night Report

Train life is slowly returning to normal. I never thought I would actually look forward to normal train life but after nearly 6 weeks of rock-bottom, normal is looking pretty pretty good. Morning inbound trains slide in roughly on time (Metro-North considers any arrival within 5 minutes 59 seconds of the schedule to be on time), and the predictability of the return trip has regained solid footing. The tracks are generally announced in advance and most of the trains are in place 20 to 30 minutes before the scheduled departure, which makes for a leisurely boarding process. There are fewer trains, and they generally have a smaller number of cars, but the ridership has adjusted and the overcrowding has been reduced to a dull roar.

Tonight I am happily ensconced in my single seat. My only annoyance is the Friday Night Beer Club, which has gathered in the vestibule directly behind me. They were screaming at each other, slapping each other on the back, and speculating about what the babe in the restroom was actually doing even before we pulled out of Grand Central. Then they popped open their first round of tallboys. It could get really nasty in here by East Norwalk. Just now a large woman in a mustard yellow sweatshirt decided to stand next to my seat while she whines to an unseen partner on her cell phone. She has a serious case of the dribbly sniffles so I hope this is only a temporary stop on her personal train journey. There is always hope.

The train characters are back after weeks of being stifled from strutting their stuff due to aisle overcrowding. I have now seen a middle-aged guy wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with "I am Proud to be a Cucky Boy" (look it up) parading up and down the aisle 3 times, and we are only at Mount Vernon! The curious 7-year old boy asking 10 questions a minute about train travel is sitting two rows in front of me. His Dad is getting almost all of the answers wrong, and I am lightly considering an Intervention. Naaaahhh. There is no upside to getting involved.

That is my Friday night report. I think I am going to shut my eyes for thirty minutes and enjoy train normalcy. Have a great weekend, and I will see you on the rails next week.

Priceless

Imagine my surprise when a Shore Line East consist pulled into Fairfield on this very cold morning.  These infamous cars are the finest rolling stock in the New Haven Line fleet.  The spacious, comfortable and clean cabins were lovingly refurbished several years back and include unheard of amenities such as table seating areas and working restrooms that do not smell like a large dead animal.  Infamous?  Yes, in a brilliant stroke of idiocy, Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, having just taken over from the disgraced former Governor John Roland in 2004, purchased these cars from the Virginia Railway Express to show the beleaguered commuters of Connecticut that she was on their side. Only afterwards was it discovered that the kind of diesel locomotive required to pull these cars did not exist in the New Haven fleet.  The VRE cars languished in the yards until about 18 months and $20 million later, when this minor oversight was quietly corrected with the purchase of some used equipment from another state at gonif prices.

The morning's surprises kept piling up.  The car doors did not open at first.  In a Commuting 101 move, hopeful passengers crowded around the doors so as to be better positioned to burst in when they did.  A few moments passed, and still they did not open. We could see the warm and happy commuters inside the half-empty car stretching out on the large comfortable seats and relaxing in style at the tables.  I was standing by a window that looked in on a fellow commuter sitting at a table.  He was enjoying a muffin and doing the Times crossword.  It was commuting utopia in there, plain and simple.

Alas, it quickly became apparent that utopia was really a mirage.  Two carmen appeared from the station house and slinked into the locomotive. To a seasoned commuter, this can mean only one thing:  Disabled train.  Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes; there was no activity and no announcements, and then the train started to ever so slowly roll back. Ten minutes later it had managed only about three feet.  Definitely the kiss of train death.  Station loudspeakers began to blurt out the bad news I already knew.  Disabled train blah blah blah.  All other trains delayed blah blah blah, sounding just like the trombone-with-plunger-mute voice of Charlie Brown's teacher.  By then I had been waiting on the platform for nearly 45 minutes and my fingertips were becoming tingly numb.  (Of course I could have donned my gloves at any time, but I would not have been able to play Blackberry Klondike with them on.)  So what’s the plan, Metro-North?

Eventually we were directed to climb up the station stairs to street-level and cross-over to the New Haven-bound side where a train would shortly arrive.  The multitude of commuters which had amassed during this incident had grown to hundreds, at least three trains worth of passengers, and I watched them all climbing and crossing over like so many lemmings.  The New Haven-bound platform was filled to the brim with people when an already full New York-bound train slowly pulled in.  As I (correctly) predicted the stopping point of the car door and took my place, I repeated my special Commuters Chant in anticipation of the soon-to-begin battle to squeeze myself onboard:

Monthly Commutation Ticket:  $308.00

Six-Month Station Parking Pass:  $170.00

Spending 24 hours per week commuting for 23 years:  Priceless

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Halloween aside, it's been quite a long time since I have seen an adult wearing one of those Mad Hatter top hats in public. You know, the really big ones. I would like to say never, but my memory is not as good as it used to be so I may have seen this before and just can't recall it. So imagine my surprise when I saw not just one person, but two adult humans looking utterly normal in every other respect, wearing nearly identical Mad Hatter hats on my train car this morning. In Connecticut no less! My mind raced. I did not notice them boarding the train, so they could have come in separately or together. They were not sitting with each other, made no apparent coordinated movements, and did not seemingly disembark together. Is this an amazing coincidence? Well, it could be, but I began to think it might actually be the beginning of a movement of some sort. As it turns out, the Hatter was amazingly prophetic in his world view, and perhaps people around this country are becoming Mad Hatters themselves.

Said the Hatter, "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" I do see. Our world has become the Mad Hatters world. When I go to CNN.com and read the main headline that the revolt in Egypt is intensifying, and then see that the second headline is about Lindsay Lohan's plea deal, I can easily say that everything is nonsense. When I go to foxnews.com and read an editorial explaining why statutory rape is not really rape, I understand what it wouldn't be, it would. This was a lot to process before even setting foot into the office and I was off my game for the first couple of hours. Lunchtime brought no relief as the Broadway tourist prop shop around the corner was out of stock in the Mad Hatter hat department. I will have to follow-up on this theme in a future post when I can figure out some closure.

SRO on the 7:05 tonight, AKA a normal commute. I ended up in a rare and coveted single seat so you will hear no complaints from me (until the train stops on the tracks for 2 hours for no reason). There was a guy with big sign at Grand Central subway entrance. It read "Life
is a terminal disease. If you are born then you will definitely die. Please help me with a few coins before I do." I did.

Funny Commuting Story (Not)

There is nothing funny about riding the train these days. Unless of course you find the ineptitude of the railroad company and clulessnes of state government officials to be hilarious. I don't. Every train is late, that is except the ones which have been cancelled. Every train is jam-packed with riders crammed and standing in the aisles and in every nook and cranny. The only good news, I suppose, is that the aisles are so clogged that the conductors cannot check tickets. Which means unless you have a monthly ticket, as do I, that you ride for free. Hooray! A free ride after which you need a shower and a change of clothes. My friend the Station Master told me this evening that it was going to get worse before it gets better, and it's not going to get better for a long, long time.. I have heard that 50% of New Haven Line cars are in the repair shop at any given time. Certainly the weather is partly to blame, but these are the same cars I rode when I was in high school, and that was a long time ago. I have heard for years that new cars are on the way, but they never come. It's like a Beckett play except with trains instead of Lucky.

How did this happen? I really don't know, and nobody is taking bakery numbers to accept responsibility. The truth is that nobody is responsible, and that is how the system was designed. The loosey-goosey relationship between the states of NY and CT and the MTA was intended to obfuscate; intended to make it possible for all parties to finger-point; intended for taxpayers and riders to take the fall. Personally I am very distressed. As I approach my golden years, it has become more and more challenging to deal with the commute on a good day than it was during my salad days. On a bad day, or in this case on a long succession of bad days, it really takes the wind out of my sails. There is nothing funny about riding the trains these days.

Oh, yes....there is a crying baby in the seat behind me.

Dinah won't you blow?

Recently I became aware that among an array of extremely racist extant stanzas of the famous old folk song, I've Been Working on the Railroad, one actually went: