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