Amber & Due to An Earlier Incident

Just when I thought the MTA had gifted you with all the celebrity, confusing service and squishedness you could handle for a weekend, I rode the train on a Saturday.  Silly rabbit.

The purpose of my journey was to pick up my first CSA winter share of the season and then celebrate the season in fellowship with Diana and Kevin.  To begin my trek, I walked down to 168th Street since it was posted in my stop that the train wasn't going north of there this weekend (which turned out to be false-- at least on my way home).

At 168th Street, there was a bulldozer driving up and down the train platform and then crossing over a make-shift bridge and unloading boulders onto a weird flat train.  This was an ominous start to what turned out to be a two hour ride (including no D service below 34th Street and a stalled A on the F line at Second Avenue).  That is the little bulldozer thing whizzing by on that train unloading thing at seemingly unsafe speeds while I waited for the downtown A.

Then, on the way home from a delightful day (which included beef stew and persimmon pudding), I went to Brooklyn.  There was no D service running from Grand Street, so I walked to the F at Delancey.  But then, there was no uptown F.  So, I had to take the F to Jay Street in Brooklyn to transfer to the uptown A which was running on the F track into Manhattan.  (Maybe you should get out a subway map just to follow along to see what an incredibly indirect route this really was.)

At Jay Street, though, I was rewarded by celebrity in the form of the Kristen Schaal who plays "Mel" on Flight of the Conchords and is a very funny Daily Show commentator.

(I chose the photo with the bird, Diana, since you liked that birdy page in Elle.)

This is Woody and me doing our impression of Kristen and her boyfriend making smoochie on the platform.

Anywhow, then the train came, and Kristen, her boyfriend, and I all got on.  Things were going swell, although mostly local, until 103rd Street when, as the conductor described it, "Something just hit our train."  Note the train did not do the hitting.  Anyhow, we sat on the train with the doors closed until a train crew arrived to check to make sure we hadn't run anyone over or a terrorist hadn't thrown a sticky bomb (I'm picturing a Wacky WallWalker with a dirty bomb in its backpack?) at us.


Once they opened the doors, there was a mass exodus.  But, as the lady next to me said, "How else would I get home?  The bus?  Puhleeze."  We even had one very angry fellow patron yell at us, "What are you bitches doing?  The train is broked.  Get your asses off."  Our decision to wait it out upset him.  But, another train wouldn't come since we were in its way.  And I just am not aggressive to fight an entire train's worth of folks for a spot on an uptown bus.  And who wants to go 70 blocks on a bus?  Puh-leeze.

Anyway, we started moving again after they determined that it was a soda can tossed off the platform at the incoming train.  And then we went express!  Whoooo!

So, two hours and 14 minutes later, I am home.  Still?  The persimmon pudding and the company of friends were worth the over four hours total time spent on trains underground.