Departure: 6:00pm
Arrival: 7:40pm
Read it and weep, 1 hour and 40 minutes! That’s like a new record. Especially since it took nearly 4 hours this morning! I left work, lit up a smoke, and made my way down 42nd street, bopping my head to the beat of my walking music, in particular, the song I had on was “Closer to the Edge” by 30 Seconds to Mars. Great song. I highly recommend it!
As I walked into the subway I found that the Harp guy was back. He sat strumming his harp and I momentarily shut off my music so that I could hear him. His plucking noises really worked with the beautiful huge Alice in Wonderland ad’s that were all around him. Made me fell, for just a moment that I wasn’t descending into the subway, but rather into the rabbit hole.
The subway pulled up just as I got onto the platform which annoyed me a bit, mostly because I have to walk to the end of it in order to get out at the right place when I hit the Times Square stop. Needless to say, I had to hop onto the train in the middle. There was a lovely brown substance on one of the seats, which I quickly avoided and moved down the train to lean against the pole and stare out the window. I always wondered why they even bothered having windows on a subway. It’s not like you can see anything out them, and for that which you can see, it’s basically rusted dirty walls illuminated by the sharp flash of sparks coming off the grinding metal beneath us.
Two things to note:
1. I finally got in a subway car that had english directions about the service changes. Although, I can’t really remember what they said.
2. I saw a very odd ad for Sprite, which at first glance looked like a beer ad. You tell me… if you only saw the green bottle, doesn’t this look like a beer ad?
As I exited the subway, a man was shouting about God and Jesus and how much he’s saving us. That would have been somewhat normal, that is, until he said “GOD WAKES YOU UP EVERY MORNING!” I never knew that God lived in my alarm clock, and in all honesty, if he does… well… I can think of quite a few better things he could be doing with his time. Strangely enough, that thought brought to my mind the idea of Dumbledore on the cards in the chocolate frog boxes from Harry Potter… “He’s gone, where’d he go?” “You don’t expect him to hang around all day, he has a lot to do.”
I found it funny as I made my way with the crowd of people up the ramp, and towards Port Authority, that as people exited the turnstiles, they paid absolutely no notice to the fact that they said “no exit”. I of course, followed suit, and walked through one that said “no-exit” but that was mostly because I realized just before I walked through. I wonder how many other people went through, because like me, they didn’t realize until too late, and instead were just following someone random. This made me think about the first person who walked through there… what a thing to have in your repartee “The very first commuter” hehe.
Now, the subway is very deep under Port Authority, so there are a couple of escalators I have to go up, and I was a few minutes early, so instead of walking up them, I hung off to the right side, and let people walk past me. I think it’s been a while since I, myself, did this… and I found it a great spot to watch people’s feet. Odd, right? But try it some time… If you look straight, you almost are looking at an angle up, so as people walk past you, you don’t really see what they look like, but you get a very clear perception of their feet. As I ascended up the escalators I played a little game in my head, trying to match what I thought people looked like based on what was on their feet. I wasn’t very good at it… maybe I should do this more often.
Finally, I made it to the top of the Port Authority, and got into line with the rest of the schmucks, who like me were trudging in and out of the city from a distance. I never noticed it before, but the damn place rumbles from the weight of all the buses. It’s quite disconcerting. I’m just waiting for the time when I go up there and it suddenly falls apart.
Getting onto the bus is quite an ordeal. I looked around a bit as I waited for the couple of people in front of me to hand their ticket to the driver, and realized that it’s quite disgusting in there. There’s fumes, exhaust, smoke… I felt for a moment as if I was standing in a burning house without the fire… The fun part was that as I got onto the bus, I noticed that the man in front of me was taking out a copy of Harry Potter. The guy had to be like late 50’s. Made me smile… Harry Potter sure has a large range!
The rest of the commute was quite uneventful. I tweeted, played sudoku, and answered some work emails. I miss having a book. I need to get one. When I got back to my car, I saw how horribly I had parked. Mind you, this morning, I was pulling into a parking spot without seeing the lines… there was just snow… So made me giggle when I saw that my car was actually in 4 parking spaces all at the same time. Awesome parking job Ash, awesome.
Tomorrow I’m staying in the city, so there won’t be a “leaving NYC” blog, and the blog the next morning won’t have a commuting blog either. I’m kind of happy to get a slight respite from the commute.
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