Amtrak Hell

My hellish commute back to New York last night was not quite as horrific as my commute to Rhode Island this past Christmas (which culminated in me shouting out to an empty street: “I need a HUSBAND. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?”) – but it was close.

I get on the train at 6 pm. It is a chilly evening. I have a bottle of water, and my Thomas Jefferson biography. I am due to get into Manhattan at 11:05.

We get to New Haven. Normally, there is about a 10 minute stop-over in New Haven, but last night it went on a bit longer than normal. Maybe half an hour. No announcements, nothing.

However, I was deeply engrossed in Thomas Jefferson’s diplomatic journey in Paris, and did not notice at all.

Finally, snap-crackle-pop, an announcement came:

“As you all have noticed, we have been sitting here for a long time. We have just gotten word that an electrical wire has fallen onto the tracks up ahead of us – and we will need to wait here in the station until the tracks have been cleared. We will let you know as soon as we hear anything.”

I barely looked up from my book.

Half an hour more goes by.

The announcer comes back on and gives a RAMBLING update, providing us with way too much information – which ended up, in all the confusion, sounding like the electrical wire was going to somehow travel down the tracks and fry us all up in a fiery mesh.

“The tracks cannot be cleared …. 3 tracks are affected … no trains can come in or out of New Haven … they’re still working to clear that wire off the tracks…”

Again, I got an image of a live-wire, raging around out of control like a dragon, a mere 30 feet away. Like that horrible final scene in Ice Storm.

Then they tell us that we have to transfer to a Metro North train, which will take us to Grand Central. The entire trainfull of people makes a mad dash to get onto the Metro North. Normal behavior disappears. Everyone shoves to get to the front of the line. I hate everybody, I hate people who shove when there is nowhere for the people in front of you to go. I checked out, emotionally, and kept my nose in my Jefferson book. I could lose myself in a book anywhere.

Metro North creeps out of New Haven. Good to be moving again, and yet I could not get out of my head the alarming image of a live electrical wire thrashing about uncontrollably on the tracks ahead of us.

With no announcement, the train stops. We sit there for 15 minutes.

I become convinced that at any moment we are going to be incincerated in a fiery mesh. But the anxiety is not enough for me to put down my book.

Then – snap-crackle-pop, the announcement comes: “We have to go back to New Haven. They cannot clear all the tracks for us to pass by.”

Audible groans. Everyone on their cell phones. I remain cool and collected, because there is only so much we can control in life, and I hate whiners. Especially in situations like that, where you clearly are not in charge of your own destiny. What is the point of groaning and complaining? Take a deep breath, and shut up.

However, it was pretty grim. We get off the train station, we are a crowd of literally hundreds of people who have nowhere to go, no way to get out of New Haven, and the temperature is plummeting. I was not dressed for winter. People were baffled, nobody seemed to be in charge – there were no announcements or updates. We basically just were told that trains in and out of New Haven were cut off from the south.

Exhausted, disoriented, the entire train-load of people shuffle down the stairs into the cavernous empty New Haven station. It is now 10 o’clock at night. There are a couple of cops who start to tell us what is happening … we all gather around them, as though they are Santa Clauses. The New Haven MTA cops were, in general, fantastic. They were patient with us, they were humorous – they also accepted the fact that people were stressed out, exhausted, annoyed – and they answered the same questions 5,000 times. I was very impressed with them.

There was a bus, shuttling back and forth between Bridgeport (the next train station) – where we could pick up Metro North to NYC. However, there was only one bus going back and forth – and hundreds of people who needed to get on that damn bus. It was going to be a long night.

People finally gave up waiting, and went to either get hotels in New Haven – or groups of people chipped in and got car services down to NYC.

I stood in the throng outside the train station, and waited for the bus to return from Bridgeport. They did not have more than one bus shuttling people back and forth, which added to the anxiety and annoyance.

When the bus arrived, it is hard to describe the mob mentality. We all KNEW that if we did not get on that bus – it meant that we had yet another hour to wait outside in the cold night. It seemed desperately urgent, to each one of us, that we be on that damn bus. However – obviously – not all of us could fit. I was the last person to squeeze on the bus. (Standing room only) – luggage everywhere, piled up, people standing all along the aisle, jammed up against each other. The poor people behind me who were not allowed to squoosh themselves onto the bus were visibly distressed. I do not blame them.

I stood all the way to Bridgeport. It’s about a half an hour trip.

By that point, the milk of human kindness was again in evidence, which always happens in crises.

Yes, there are those dipshits who, the second things don’t go their way, start to freak out, complain, bitch, moan, and try to get themselves first in line. But the opposite is also true.

There was a young kid carrying a hockey stick, wearing a winter hat, who had been standing outside in the throngs, and had apparently struck up a conversation with a small fur-clad woman who was not a day over 85. When the bus came, and everyone started shoving forward – this kid called out to the cops, “Is there any way she can get to the front of the line, and get on the bus?” Chivalry towards this ancient woman, who had already dragged her bags off trains, onto trains, up stairs, down stairs – with no help.

Anyway, the cops complied, and made the shoving whiners clear a path for hockey-kid and old-woman (He carried her bags.) The two of them sat together, and talked the entire way to Bridgeport.

I was standing over them, and listened to the entire conversation, just loving the both of them. I am not sure how this came up, but I heard the old woman say, “Well, then you must be familiar with Mike Aruzione…” which – I thought was so HILARIOUS. Mike Aruzione, of course, was the captain of the US Olympic hockey team in 1980, the one who made the winning goal (“The Goal”) against the Russians. The hockey-playing kid was from Boston, and so the two of them started talking, in-depth, about hockey, of all things.

They discussed the 1980 winter olympics.

She said something like, “Well, remember, though, that they didn’t win the gold medal with the game against Russia – They still had to beat Finland…”

Ha ha ha I loved that.

She was teeny, and as wrinkled-up as a piece of old lace, but I heard her laugh ringing out through the bus, as the two of them talked about hockey the entire way to Bridgeport.

People are beautiful.

We stood about on the Bridgeport platform, freezing, sleepy, waiting …

Finally, the train came. And thank the good Lord above there were plenty of seats. We still had over an hour until we got to New York, and by this point it was midnight. I found 3 empty seats, laid myself down, and slept the whole way there.

When I emerged from the vast echoey coliseum of Grand Central, I was greeted by freezing air, stinging rain, and absolutely no taxi cabs.

I stood in the middle of the street, arm in the air, for half an hour, waiting. Waiting. Waiting. One cab finally pulled over, and this woman, who had literally been hiding behind me, leaped out in front of me and jumped in the cab.

As the cab pulled away, I screamed right at the closed window. “YOU BITCH!”

People are not beautiful.

Everyone has a breaking point. That woman played dirty pool, and I will not countenance such unfair tactics.

But a cab pulled over 2 seconds later. I got in, and bargained a price with the driver, who literally was Salman Rushdie’s identical twin.

Salman got me home in half an hour.

It was 2 in the morning.

I still feel out of it. In a fog.

Winter has gripped New York again. Snow falling this morning, a snowy mist hiding the skyline at the end of my street, and a dark low look to the sky.

It’s good to be home.