Escalators

It's growing late on a Monday and I've got too much happening in the next half an hour to post long, but I did want to explain commuting in New York, as if I haven't already. Our mornings consist of running around the apartment between 5-something and 6.30 and then we hit the street, this time of year bundled in ample amounts of clothing and coats and boots and gloves and in the summer just praying we don't sweat too much en route to the train. The subway station, regardless of time of year, is several layers of heat. You can feel the different layers beginning on your face and suffocating all the way down to your toes. It's especially uncomfortable when you're in your already-several-tiered layers of clothing during these brutal winter months. If a train isn't parked waiting for you, which is a rarity anyway, and there are commuters milling about looking uncomfortable in their layers of clothing and the layers of subway station heat, it's fairly much a given that no train has been to the station in a while and when one does plan to arrive, it will be stuffed to the absolute gills with uneasy riders. So, that's morning. I could go on to describe hurrying through 42nd Street down the stairs and as fast as we can along the 7 train platform so that we make it to the second to the first car headed Main Street Flushing-bound, or I could mention the New York commuters who think stopping to dial their cell phone in an open threshhold where only four people can fit through and are anxious to get to their destination is okay, or there are those who try to dive out of the train ahead of you at Grand Central likely knowing full well every single person surrounding them is also getting off at Grand Central. But what I really want to mention here, given the fact that I had big plans of leaving work at 5 (and executed said plan) and stopping for groceries to make Craig a Cooking Light fried rice recipe, is that I reached 59th Street with little delay, catching a happily accidental 7-express train for several stretches leaving Flushing, and quickly enough catching a W at Queensboro Plaza, and then...59th Street. I headed down the stairs to the Express track where the 4/5 have next stop at 86th Street, our stop. There sat a train waiting, doors open. On your way down a flight of subway stairs, you can hear a train groaning if it's sitting there. I could hear that a train awaited its next departure as I thundered down the stairs astride all the other anxious commuters. And then there is this disappointing lull in life as you see the sea of heads bobbing around the platform - something is the matter - people aren't stuffing into the train for a quick depart. No, there was an "incident" earlier at the 86th Street Station and therefore all Uptown Express Trains are running at slow/no speeds. Or so the gargled overhead announcement sort of helps you to realize. I performed the whole obligatory Get on the Train and Hope Today's Your Lucky Day, and five - ten minutes in realized I was on the fast track to no place, so I got off with the rest of the swarms and climbed the upward escalator to get to the 6 Local train. I was about 2/3rds of the way up on the escalator when the weight of several hundred people must have jarred the thing - after all, it is just a huge conveying belt likely incapable of emotionally and physically carrying the weight of that many angry commuters - because it lurched to a halt, and commuters were driven forward at the force. Screams and pushing ensued. I was scared enough from the blunt shove of escalator to human as it was - I didn't take kindly to those prone to freaking out as they shoved and shouted! Luckily, the 6 platform was a mess of New York therefore the escalator had little room to dump its panic and we all cushioned each other in one way or the next. I waited for 3 trains before I finally caught a 4th 6 Local. And I hurried to the grocery which didn't have a fraction of what I needed to make chicken/shrimp fried rice. I found my miserable way home and Craig had already arrived, having missed a majority of the chaos, and I sent him off to C-Town for the remaining ingredients Key Food didn't have. And wouldn't you know, my dinner was terrific, after all the mess I put myself through just to get home tonight.*Craig is watching 3.10 to Yuma and I'm going to work on a story for Sharon and head to bed. What a night. What times being in New York City that will just not be forgotten.