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.
