Off-Peak Commute

Last night I stayed in town late to go to a lecture with a friend and he took this photo from the other side of the tracks as we waited for the T to come so we could commute in opposite directions. So, here’s a glimpse of my commuting garb: fall coat, gray slip-on sneaks, black scarf. You can’t see my lime-green bag (which matches my other commuting shoes: lime-green & turqouise Kangaroo sneaks), but I have to maintain some mystery I suppose.

The off-peak commute presents a slew of new issues and characters. Like the bike riders. You cannot bring bikes on during peak hours, but you can off-peak. Let me tell you, it’s pretty funny to see. Well, not so much the average commuter with a bike, but last night I also saw a turbo-pobably-works-at-a-bike-shop bicyclist decked out in all the serious bicyclist gear. You know, the special shoes, neon spandex outfit including a shirt with pockets on the back for a water bottle etc (which he kept in the pocket while sitting on the train which just doesn’t seem comfy), a spandexy hat, and general bicyclist wildness. We know how much I love bicylists on the road…they are, perhaps, slightly more tolerable on the train. Mostly because they are not asking to be treated like trains and they are not actually cycling.

But the late commute is a little eerie since there are so few people involved (as evidenced by the above photograph–you don’t see that at peak commute). Plus in the pitch dark you can’t see stops and they don’t bother using the loud speaker so at some points you really have no idea where you are.

Therefore, the lesson learned here is to sit closer to the front of the car near the soft-spoken/dictionless conductor guy during an off-peak commute, otherwise you could find you’re on the midnight train going anywhere, or at least that you’ve gone past your stop.

So You Think You Can Dance…

…on the MBTA, but you’re wrong.

Well, you can bounce to a beat, if you don’t mind the funny looks, which I don’t.

And you can sit. Well, that is if you strike a reasonable balance of seat-picking strategy, optimism, and luck.

When I first considered the topic of this entry, I thought I would be able to offer helpful strategies for seat picking and seat-partner picking to all who dare to travel the MBTA but unfortunately I’ve come to realize that is impossible. There are no reliable trends that I’ve found so far because seat-picking and seat-partner picking involve an interesting combination of personal choice  interacting with accompanying travelers’ demographics. (There is something worthy of serious study here, and perhaps it’s been done–how people choose or avoid sitting with people whom they perceive to be of similar or dissimilar race/ethnicity/age/class/gender/marital status/sexual orientation/etc– oh social constructs of difference, you are fascinating. But, not really something I’m going to undertake at the moment). So I will leave you with a few general tips for commuter-rail riding that are helpful for all:

1. Notice where the train bathrooms are. Do not use them except in case of emergency.  Sit at least three rows away from them.

2. While you’re at it, move in from the doorways toward the center of the car. This way you can avoid the comings and goings drafts and also the not-so-lucky standers who will totally hoover in your space. You know how I feel about that.

3. In the morning you can usually safely sit in a 2-seater or 3-seater with only one partner. In the afternoon, make sure you go for the 2-seater.

4. If you are choosing an empty seat, slide in. Well, you don’ thave to. But it makes it so you don’t have to deal with the akward stand up move around blah blah.

5. In all scenarios sit quickly. People are ruthless. They want to see you stand.

6. If the car already looks full, sit even more quickly. If it’s super full, don’t fall for the idea that if you keep walking a car ahead will be less full. That is almost never true and you will still have to join the middle of a 3-seater. But it’s more frustrating that way than if you just decided to suck it up in the first place. Besides, sometimes when you get lucky and just decide to sit in a 3-seater the guy on the outside slides in and spends the whole ride showing you (after you stop pretending to not be interested) and the other seat partner how to use an Amazon Kindle while the train continues to get further and further behind schedule.

I’m not often in the situation of having someone choose ME to sit with because I get on the train after most people. Besides, that whole scene is a horse of a different color.

So to wrap things up here… lessons learned: the basics for successful seat-finding are speed, endurance, and hope. Good qualities for just about anything I suppose.

Honeymoon’s Over

So far I’ve been relatively pleased with the pace and reliability of my commute. Sure, I commute a fair amount of time each day and have had some interesting seat partners, but in general everything has been going pretty smoothly.

I can’t even hold the time I missed my train against the MBTA–I was running late, it was off-peak, and as one conductor kindly told me years ago as I ran toward a train: “Trains don’t wait for people, people wait for trains.”

Today, however, was different.

I left work with a skip in my step (literally, for some reason; a co-worker noticed) ready to hop on the T and then the train and have a productive evening catching up on things. The T was packed but it is most of the time so that was no big surprise. The train was also packed.

Seat picking was dicey. While I’m not at full “move the heck over” mode yet, I did say within earshot that people at the front of the car were pretending they couldn’t see me, making a fellow commuter chuckle.

I considered standing until the first stop when a lot of people get off but finally a guy moved over into the middle of a three-seater (! this never happens ! but I think it was because he knew the woman on the inside seat) and I was able to sit down. I was feeling like MBTA karma was on my side and then, close to the first stop, the train came to a complete stop.

They told us that we had to wait for another train to pass. So we waited. And a train passed. And then they told us there was rust interfering with the train signal. This is about the time I got a text from my mother that said they make these things up. It did sound a bit suspicious. RUST? Don’t we plan for RUST when we involve metal and the outdoors?? And they told us it would take 10 more minutes. Which meant we sat there for about 25. Who knows what was actually going on.

While half an hour delay doesn’t seem like it would throw off your evening plans, when you try to go to bed between 9 and 10, the minutes are precious. And as you sit watching the clock tick by, you get a bit annoyed. I tried to keep my spirits up by listening to music [Amerie's "Gotta Work" came in very handy, listened to it twice during the ride home, once on the way in, and once at lunch], reading, and making to-do lists. The usual. But it was still lame.

So while I’m still much happier taking the train and T than I would be, say, driving into the city every day, I am slightly less enamored by public transportation. Especially since I know this is just the first of many rides like this to come.

Lesson of the Day: Never plan to just stand until the next stop on the commuter rail, suck it up and sit in the middle. I would have been SO SO unhappy standing at that stop for half an hour. Yikes.

Early Bird Special

So today was my first “special” day, or “early bird special day” as I just decided to call it, a day that I had to be at work at 7:30 (usually it’s 8:30). Now ,to the teacher types in the crowd, this may not seem too too early, but when you have to take the first train that exists in the morning, it just doesn’t sit well psychologically.

I naively thought that going in early would mean I would “beat the commuters” but the Red Line was just as crowded as always, if not more so! The commuters are everywhere at all times.

[Side Note: There's probably something funny I could write about the past few days of commuting but let me just say now that I have come to appreciate the part of the Red Line I take far more after an evening of further-inbound Red Line and Green Line--yikes.]

Getting back to the general early-bird theme, let’s talk a little bit about lines.

People LOVE lining up. At certain train stations (like mine) people totally BREAK the “first come, first serve” idea in the morning and pretend as if we all got there at the exact same time and so they just hop on board as they see fit. This is in surprising opposition to the way these very same people behave when getting off the train. To get off the train, people LOVE lining up. Even though the commuter rail gives you ample time to get off the train, people feel the need to get up and get in line 10+ minutes ahead of time.  After sneaky sneaking on the train before other people who were at the stop before them to find the most ideal seat with the most ideal seat-partner**, people just hop up to stand and wait! I (clearly) just don’t get that. Ohh people.

Lesson of the day: Don’t even TRY to get into the walking lane (left) on the escalator if you don’t get into it immediately. It’s an impossible merge. People love that line way too much.

**Seat-partner picking strategies will have to be further examined in another post, once I have a few more examples…I find it quite fascinating though.

A lucky day to start off on the right foot…

I got to sit by myself for [the majority of] my ride home today!

Without some context, you may not realize why this is a note-worthy, blog-starting event. Here’s the background:

In my new daily commute, I get on a stop AFTER everyone else in the world. This means that most 2-seaters and the 3-seaters have two sitters and if there are ONLY two sitters in a 3-seater, guess which seat is open? The middle. Between who? Large men who use the extra space for their persons, reading materials, bags, etc…even when you are sitting there. Which I do. Because the alternative is to stand. And standing on the commuter rail is way worse than standing on the Red Line, which is the other funso part of my daily commute.

But TODAY was a special day!

It would have been even more special if it was a random act of MBTA kindness and I didn’t have to earn that luxurious ride home…

So that other fun part of the commute, the Red Line, for those who don’t know, goes very far underground (which will hereafter be called the “bowels of Hell”–copyright held by my mother, who has been commuting far longer than I have) and to get back to the non-Hell world you have to take the escalator up very, very far.

100 stairs worth in fact. My mom did an approximate count one day when she decided to walk up instead of taking the escalator. Seem like a rookie mistake? She does it for exercise. I, however, RAN IT TODAY to make my train after staying late at work. YES I SAID RAN. UP. ONE HUNDRED. STAIRS. IN FLIP FLOPS (at least not heels!). It was not pretty. I have no business running up stairs like that and I honestly wasn’t sure if I would make it.

Lesson of the day: Take the motorized path out of the bowels of Hell. It is the road more traveled by and it makes all the difference.