Scenic Route to Work

I woke up this morning to a report of wire troubles on my usual train route to work. Lovely. The traffic guy said "find an alternate route". My city-bound train wasn't running. Then the live on-the-scene reporter said that 3 south-bound tracks were open and if you're going south, things are moving along. Since I was headed south, it sounded safe to go my usual route. I thought that I needed to trek 30 minutes away to the other train station.

All looked normal at first. My local train arrived on time. The expensive train before it was on time. Things seemed to be going well, but it dawned on me when we neared my connection. If the trains can’t come north then what trains were we to take south? Why hadn't I thought about that earlier?

Thing still looked good. I saw one of the later trains parked in its usual spot as we arrived on the platform. The train stopped right in front of the departures monitor. CANCLED CANCLED CANCLED. This was beyond, not amused. Myself, a gentleman and another girl my age stood their dumbfounded.

My first thought was to catch the next expensive train (why didn't I try begging my way onto the one that had just passed my starting point?) because it would only be about a half-hour ride if things went well, but the gentleman suggested the scenic route down the western border of the state. Don't get me wrong. It's a very nice train. It's just an incredibly long ride to take into the city.

We tried asking the train worker about the trains and he said they may send down a train but he didn't know when. So we opted for the scenic train and managed to pick up 2 more people on the way. They basically could only get out "do you know…" before I just said "Follow me". The ride was nice and boy was I surprised how crowded it got. We probably bought the $1.25 ticket when we didn't need to. Oh well.

When we reached the end of the line, I couldn't get the vending machine to take my money for the next ticket. Everybody pitched in and gave me the quarters I needed. Thanks a bunch! I did get thank you’s for playing tour guide.

We lost one girl somewhere along the line and two of our party got off at an earlier stop. The last lady and myself jumped off at the last stop and headed up to the surface streets. I suggested we walk toward the taller buildings because for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what was south and what was north. I just knew the buildings were taller where we worked.

Within feet, she met up with one of her coworkers. We finally all introduced ourselves and figured out that we were going the right way. So instead of getting into the office at 7:35, I cruised in, hot and tired, at 8:15. Oh well. That's what I get for doubting my initial decision, but maybe I made a few new friends in the process. It really wasn't all that bad, after all.

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