where I’ve been
It’s been a busy few days, let me tell you.
To start with, on Friday morning, we heard on the news (far too late to be of any real use to us) that the Orange Line wasn’t running between Haymarket and Back Bay. Which, really, fantastic. That would mean a choice of:
- taking the overcrowded shuttle bus from Haymarket to somewhere (as the shuttles don’t stop at Downtown Crossing, where both Mary Ellen and I get off)
- getting off the Orange Line at North Station, taking the Green Line to Part Street, and then going our separate ways (she to Kendall, me to South) on the Red Line; in hindsight, this might have been the best option
- driving to Alewife and taking the Red Line all the way in
We opted for the last one, which managed to get us to work late, but on the plus side with only a minimal amount of aggravation. That decision would haunt us later in the day.
My wife leaves Kendall at 4 and gets to Alewife without incident. I leave work at 4:30, get to South Station around 4:45, and sit on a train. The train sits for several minutes before finally pushing off.
When we get to Park Street, there is an announcement to the effect of, “Park Street, the doors open on both sides. Please don’t mind the signs of a fire and exit quickly.” That’s hardly encouraging, but since there’s quite a few stops between Park and Alewife, I don’t think anything of it.
The train rolls along, perhaps a bit slower than normal, but hardly at an unusual speed until Central Square, where we wait for a few minutes. “This train will be standing by due to traffic ahead.” Given the number of times we hear that in a given week, it’s easy to discount (and none of us ever believe that that’s actually the issue). And soon enough, we’re rolling into Harvard.
Leaving Harvard is when all hell breaks loose. We sit for five minutes, not moving, at two points between Harvard and Porter. After Porter, we sit for another five minutes before pulling into Davis. If I had been smart, I would have gotten off at Davis and walked to Alewife. But I didn’t know the extent of the clusterfuck yet to come.
About a hundred yards out of Davis, we stop again. I’m shocked that we didn’t derail from the combined force of everyone on the train rolling their eyes. My cell phone, by the way, is dead, so even if I could get a signal, I can’t send the “Fucking T” message that I had tried to send around Harvard.
As we’re waiting (and waiting), the driver get on the intercom and says, “Due to a fire at Park Street, traffic is backed up between Alewife and Park. Because of that, traffic going into Alewife has to wait.” This announcement is repeated five minutes later, followed by, “Would the person having the medical emergency please press the emergency intercom again?”
About ten minutes later, the driver says, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We are waiting to be cleared by control. We need to wait for a spot in Alewife to open up in order for us to go into the station. We will let you know if there is an update.” To which I said, “That ‘if’ is rather ominous sounding.”
And then, as if by magic, we roll again, into the station. It’s nearly 6 pm. When I find Mary Ellen, she looks at me as though I would intentionally be this late, which confuses me, since I’m sure there must have been some announcements, with the back-ups as bad as they were. But no, There weren’t any announcements at all. None until about five minutes after my train got in.
So, that blew my Friday night. Saturday, we drove up to visit my mother-in-law. She’d had surgery on Thursday to repair a disc and remove some bone spurs in her neck. So we went to visit and came home on Sunday.
Today and tomorrow, I don’t have to work (hoorah), but I don’t know how much updating I’ll do. It is a vacation after all.
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October 10th, 2007 at 11:24 am
No, see, that look was a “What the hell, I thought you were dead!!” look.