This time, I don’t think it was my travel karma, I think I got caught in someone else’s bad luck. As you might recall, yesterday I was taking the train to NYC to meet friends for dinner. It was sprinkling a little, so I took an umbrella as I left the house (at 5:00 p.m.) and I had a nice leisurely walk to the train station. The train pulled into the station on time and I caught it with ease.
At Chappaqua, ten minutes into my hour commute, the train stopped at the station and the conductor announced that they were holding us. Later they came on the speaker and said that the tracks were flooded. Interesting. Then they came on again and said that a tree had come down on the tracks, because of the flooding and that they were going to bus us around the flooding to White Plains, several stops farther down the line.
They filled three busses–I was on the third–the first two got stuck, someplace, which I heard about because I was sitting at the front of the bus close to the train conductor. By this point it was rush hour and the bus was inching forward. We finally got to the turn for the train station, and there was a police car there. Why? Initially I thought it was because someone had had a wreck, and there was a wrecked car there, but that was a mere coincidence. The policeman was there to steer traffic away from the train station because it was on fire.
He told us that we had to continue down the road we were on, and go to the next station. Unfortunately, the road went under a bridge that was 9’5″, the bus was 10’2″. The driver realized this before we got to it, but it did mean that we had to detour again. The detour led us to a stretch of road on which the water was so deep, that the door handles were under water. So he did a very impressive three point turn and finally found a route to the station to get us on the train.
Once I was on the train again, everything went smoothly, but I didn’t arrive in NYC for dinner until 9:30. Four and a half hours after I left the house. But I think the travel karma belonged to someone else, because once I reached the subway, there was a train waiting everytime I reached a platform.
I wound up staying at Jonathan’s because I couldn’t face the trip home. Sarah had the spare bed, and I took the couch. Today she and I went out to coffee and then lunch. So, in the end, it was lovely.
I can’t even … that’s horrific. Please tell me you had something to read?
I had my palm pilot with multiple magazines and novels. I even got some writing done. The real challenge was my cell phone battery, which started to die before I even got to the bus leg of the journey.