serinde

Or: Transit Fail Trifecta In Play.

What's worse than my 2.5 hour commute last night? My 2.5 hour commute this morning. Because it's about twenty degrees colder.

The odyssey begins on the train from my station, where (just before the transfer station where you switch to go to NYC) the conductor announced that there was a problem at Penn, and one should not attempt to transfer, and some other stuff that couldn't be heard because the speaker in the car I was in was broken.

sweh tipped me off via text ~~that a train had broken down in the tunnel~~ UPDATE: It was power lines down in Newark, which was WHAT BROKE EVERYTHING LAST NIGHT, did I mention how third-world this Goddamn system is?--and that, additionally, there was a fire at Hoboken so the PATH wasn't running.

Here is where I made a failure of judgment: I backed the notion that the PATH would be up and running first. This was dumb, because non-working Penn Station during rush hour is going to be serious priority, but they often fail at that anyways, and usually PATH failures are of moderately brief duration. Too, from Hoboken I had the option of taking the ferry. So I stayed on.

So, Hoboken, and indeed the PATH is not running. The line for the ferry snakes all the way through the station and out to the bus parking lot. They're telling people to get on the light rail, which goes down through Jersey City (and wouldn't that have been useful when we lived there?), and pick up the PATH from Pavonia or Exchange Place. Ensues now a half-hour waiting on a cold pier in a mob of people who are trying to stuff onto a transit in no way prepared to cope with it. I should mention at this point that, although I was pretty well bundled up, I had one major error in garb: in the dark, I'd accidentally grabbed my summer hiking socks. The ones that try to direct heat AWAY FROM YOUR FEET. My toes are blocks of ice.

Eventually I get on a train, and eventually it gets to Exchange Place. Whereupon another ten minutes of wait in an unheated alcove to get into the station, whereupon we learn that this line is experiencing delays due to "police activity". ~~Rioting annoyed passengers, I can only assume.~~ UPDATE: A drunk guy fell on the tracks. *headdesk* (No, he didn't get hit, he just fucked everyone else up.) And the first PATH that comes is so crowded, almost no one can get on it. I make the second one, and then transfer to the 4/5 at Fulton, which then proceeds to go more slowly than the local. But, at length, I arrive, a full hour late.

And then discover that the mini-Starbucks in the lobby has broken their espresso machine. PERFECT!~

It is to be hoped that the annoyance will fade in time for me to be productive, but I make no promises.