Bad Things Happen When You Leave The City
All Carlos and I wanted to do yesterday was take the NJ Transit 163 bus to Garden State Mall and do a little shopping for some new smaller clothes, including some things to wear in Spain.
First, we got stuck on the E train to Times Square for one hour because someone fell/was pushed/jumped onto the tracks and got killed by the train in front of us. Thank whomever that we had seats, because we wound up sitting on the train for a full hour. They had to turn the electricity off of the tracks and put the emergency brakes on each of the cars one by one, so we got to sit in just the emergency lights and no air conditioning for a while. Three older women from - we guessed Ohio - were next to us and made the stupidest comments I think I've ever heard. And it had nothing to do with the fact that they are tourists, and everything to do with them not understanding the first thing about how electronic devices work. A sampling:
"Now that they've shut the power down on the tracks, do you think we'll be able to use our cells phones down here?"
"If we had an iPod, it wouldn't work either, because we're underground."
"I wonder if the train that hit the person derailed from the impact."
And then after a crazy man walked through our train yelling at no one: "Oh, that man is so old that he's probably been through stuff like this all the time." (No, he's just apeshit crazy.)
"The conductor just told us 10 more minutes, but he said half an hour 15 minutes ago, so it's still about the same amount of time."
If we were all on "Lost," they'd so be the background red shirts who die on one of the missions.
Carlos at least played video games on his phone to stay distracted, but I had nothing to do except pretend to nap and listen to the three morons next to us. On the way out of the train, there were over a dozen cops at the platform, and Carlos saw the tarp that covered the body. I just...I just need to never be that close to a person who has died from the MTA ever again.
Then, when we finally get to Port Authority - now an hour off schedule - the same woman who spends 20 minutes asking every single person in line which bus is coming (um, see the 15 giant signs that say "163?" Guess what that means???), is also the same woman who misses her stop in Jersey and screams bloody murder from the back of the bus to stop so she can get off.
We did manage to achieve most of our goals in Jersey: Carlos got new jeans, new black pants, and a new shirt, and I got new jeans, new pants, a new shirt, and a dress for Spain (all size 8s!!!). But, just in case our day wasn't fun enough, on the way home the bus driver stopped the bus twice to walk up and down the aisle yelling at us all for drinking beer. Beer that none of us smelled or saw. *sigh*
Anyway, today was better. We looked at potential apartment buildings around the city, from the Lower East Side to the Financial District to Battery Park City to the Upper West Side. And the best part of the weekend: on the way home we ran into palimpsestuous!!! Yay!!!
So that was our weekend, and we were so traumatized by our adventure on the E train and the dead person that today I brought an iPod and a Madrid travel guide with us. Just in case.
First, we got stuck on the E train to Times Square for one hour because someone fell/was pushed/jumped onto the tracks and got killed by the train in front of us. Thank whomever that we had seats, because we wound up sitting on the train for a full hour. They had to turn the electricity off of the tracks and put the emergency brakes on each of the cars one by one, so we got to sit in just the emergency lights and no air conditioning for a while. Three older women from - we guessed Ohio - were next to us and made the stupidest comments I think I've ever heard. And it had nothing to do with the fact that they are tourists, and everything to do with them not understanding the first thing about how electronic devices work. A sampling:
"Now that they've shut the power down on the tracks, do you think we'll be able to use our cells phones down here?"
"If we had an iPod, it wouldn't work either, because we're underground."
"I wonder if the train that hit the person derailed from the impact."
And then after a crazy man walked through our train yelling at no one: "Oh, that man is so old that he's probably been through stuff like this all the time." (No, he's just apeshit crazy.)
"The conductor just told us 10 more minutes, but he said half an hour 15 minutes ago, so it's still about the same amount of time."
If we were all on "Lost," they'd so be the background red shirts who die on one of the missions.
Carlos at least played video games on his phone to stay distracted, but I had nothing to do except pretend to nap and listen to the three morons next to us. On the way out of the train, there were over a dozen cops at the platform, and Carlos saw the tarp that covered the body. I just...I just need to never be that close to a person who has died from the MTA ever again.
Then, when we finally get to Port Authority - now an hour off schedule - the same woman who spends 20 minutes asking every single person in line which bus is coming (um, see the 15 giant signs that say "163?" Guess what that means???), is also the same woman who misses her stop in Jersey and screams bloody murder from the back of the bus to stop so she can get off.
We did manage to achieve most of our goals in Jersey: Carlos got new jeans, new black pants, and a new shirt, and I got new jeans, new pants, a new shirt, and a dress for Spain (all size 8s!!!). But, just in case our day wasn't fun enough, on the way home the bus driver stopped the bus twice to walk up and down the aisle yelling at us all for drinking beer. Beer that none of us smelled or saw. *sigh*
Anyway, today was better. We looked at potential apartment buildings around the city, from the Lower East Side to the Financial District to Battery Park City to the Upper West Side. And the best part of the weekend: on the way home we ran into palimpsestuous!!! Yay!!!
So that was our weekend, and we were so traumatized by our adventure on the E train and the dead person that today I brought an iPod and a Madrid travel guide with us. Just in case.