Nightmare on Metro North

I’s been a vewy vewy bad blogger – sorry buddies! My massive whirlwind of a vaca is totes to blame. I promise to be more persistent now that I’m back! Here’s a nice long one for yas.

The theme of today’s bloggie hadn’t so much as crossed my mind 48 hours ago. But I should have known. Of course I should have known. I Secret-ed disaster to myself.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Ooooh la la Connecticut! My oh my Rhode Island! Wahoo, yipeeeee Cape Cod! Such an incredible week with ridiculously amazing people. Alas (I think part of me was positively off my rocker for even thinking this), I was kinda looking forward coming back to the city.

My lovely lady friends, Ri and Michelle, have found themselves some brand new digs in the EVills. Being the magnanimous/ stupendously-outrageously-indebted friend that I am (they helped me move last year – yep that's my old apartamento on moving day to the right), I offered to help them paint it.

Sure, I was pretty burnt out after my Tour de New England, but I opted to take the 8:30 am train Tuesday morning for optimal painting time.

Big.

Effing.

MISTAKE.
If there was ever a Metro North, Wassaic to Grand Central, cataclysmic-Perfect-Storm-of-goddamn-events, this was it. And I....I was in the eye.

Papa P dropped me off around 8:10. He had to go to work and I was perfectly content reading my book that I had no problemo sitting there for 20 minutes.

We left on time and were pulling into Harlem Valley-Wingdale, just twenty-five minutes away, when the train started showing sicky signs. But we made it out of that station. Slowly, yes, chugging along at approximately four-and-a-half miles per hour...then poof. We stopped. The lights went off. The air stopped blowing. The train broke down.

Half an hour went by. Forty-five minutes. An hour. An hour and twenty minutes. Sure, the lackadaisical conductor was updating us with “They’re ahhhhh sending out ahhhh mechanic now.” And “Looks like ahhhhh there’s gonna be ahhhh buses running to Southeast.” And “We’re still ahhhhh waiting to see if they can ahhhhh fix the engine.” And, my favorite, “We’re still ahhhhh waiting here.”

Really? Thanks.
The mechanics couldn’t do jack shit to the stupid electrical engine (clean air be damned, at least diesel engines were dependable!) Gah! And so we sat.

Now let me just say that when I go home to Connecticut, I usually bring one or two bags with me. However, like rabbits, those incestuous couple of bags duplicate and multiply and pretty soon I have four bags, five, to contend with on my trip back to NYC.

Five would have been manageable. I woulda been fine with five, sure. But of course, of COURSE, on this particularly unspecial occasion, I was carrying seven separate bags.

I was flustered, frenzied – yeah, it’s not like I had to get back to go to work but I did have a paint-date obligation to fulfill...and seven goddamn bags to carry.

A new engine came down the tracks and pushed us back 100 feet to the platform. Buses it was! I threw the three heaviest bags over my shoulders, heaved the remainders onto my forearms, and booked it. Booked it as fast as I could with scores of pounds of clothes, perishables, and bags-o-goodies from Targ.

There was a line for the bus but I was, oddly, optimistic. It was somewhat of an unusual experience for me, not being overly anxious. Not being in a particularly huge rush.

That should have been my warning sign. I should have known better...should have seen the ironic foreshadowing, should have realized that they Law of Attraction is not something to be taken lightly.

The bus was full. The nerve. The nerve of Metro North to send one measly coach bus to pick up three – THREE – cars worth of train passengers.

Overtired, overdrinked from the week, overweighed by my bags, overwhelmed, overanxious, overheating (wow, you can really put the word “over” in front of just about anything and it works), my eyes pooled and big, fat crocodile tears spilled over.

I snatched my oversized sunglasses, with some difficulty, out of my purse and called my mom. And, like the twenty-six year old baby that I am, I cried. Yes. Yes, there was snot.

After a few deeps breaths, I got myself together, left my plethora of bags, and went to ask a mechanic what the deal was. Metro North had the impudence to call back that stupid broken train to Harlem Valley-Wingdale, the one we had gotten off of fifteen minutes earlier, to pick up Those Left Behind.

So silly. So atrociously, preposterously silly. WHY COULDN’T THEY JUST BRING US ALL THE WAY TO SOUTHEAST IN THE FIRST PLACE????

Sure, there’s laws about riding on “broken” trains and shit, but whatever. They had a perfectly good engine pushing the train. Why make a girl cry, yo?

About ten of us limped into Southeast station with a “Ha, HA!, you selfish little bus-takers! We win!”, then got on our very own “special” train to take us from Southeast. I felt like a VIP. It was positively amazing...for ten minutes, till I heard them say we had to transfer at North White Plains.

What? WHAT? To compound the idiocy, the illogical whirlwind of nonsensical stupidity, the frustration of train to bus to train to train, we had to take (yet) ANOTHER train from North White Plains to Grand Central.

AND of COURSE it was a goddamn local train stopping at Scarsdale, Tuckahoe, Botanical Gardens – every stupid stop we Wassaic-ers usually bypass. Ugh! Four different trains. Four! When the conductor asked me for my ticket on that last leg, I gave him my best pout-scowl. He saw it was from Wassaic, looked at me, then said, “Just wanted to see where you were coming from. You’re OK.” Really, buddy? As if you’re doing me a favor by not punching out one of the trips on my 10-Trip ticket? How kind. How very generous.

Five hours later, I finally arrived in New York. Goody, goody gosh darn gumdrops.

But what perhaps irked me most about this experience - aside from the neverendingness of it all – was that no one offered to help me with my gazillion heavy ass bags.

“That’s a lot of bags you have for all these trains!” one man had the gumption to say as he picked up his briefcase and squeezed by me. No shcnocky Sherlock.

Oh wait, I lied. Actually a middle-aged man caught my dress bag from falling completely off the seat.

But other than that, not a single finger was lifted. Not one. And my heart sank along with my slumping, weighed down shoulders.

Chivalry, and my love for Metro North (for their dependability, their timeliness), are both, indeed, dead.