Wednesday, September 3, 2008

New York Subway Systems

This is a short rant about the New York Subway Systems. If you feel your day is going your way and your up beat and ready to take on life you should probably find a happier blog to read and come back to this one on a day where you already feel miserable and out of luck. . .

Ah, new york, the lights, the shows, the statue of liberty, the american dream, the subway systems. . . with stairs and no air conditioning and construction. I don't know how many peopled have carried their 4 month old son all over Manhattan, not pushed in a stroller but carried, but I know that I have and my thighs burn. We started out walking everywhere so that we could see everything because being in New York City is a very romantic idea but then your feet start to hurt and you begin to realize that you haven't bothered to wear tennis shoes since the snow stopped falling and walking 26.2 miles in Manhatten is not the best time to start. So feet hurting we decide it is time to hop onto that wonderful public transportation system called the subway. You walk down a set of stairs and swipe your card then you walk down another set of stairs, and then another set of stairs, and then another set of stairs, and then . . . well, you get the idea. As you go deeper and deeper into the earth you realize that you are slowly and willingly taking yourself straight down into hell. The air is getting thicker with smoke, it is getting hotter and hotter, your feet are hurting worse and there is a rumbling coming from all around you. Because of this experience I have decided to turn my life around and I will always follow all the commandments and be on my best behavior. ( I will never gossip again no matter how much i enjoy it. )
After many confusing New York signs. (Communication is not new york's strong point even for being the world leader in advertising, journalism, business, and public relations. Obviously that talent is wasted on some other more important thing than trying to get some where.) We hopped on a train. Did I mention no air and lots of stairs? Bryan was busy studying his handy dandy map while i was finally able to set Oliver down and enjoy a little air conditioning when Bryan announced that we were on an express train headed in exactly the wrong direction and we would need to hop off at the next stop and try to find the Train going the other direction. *Sigh*
More stairs, more heat, and finally a new train. Hooray! I sit down put Oliver down on my lap, enjoy the air conditioning and the conductor comes over the loud speaker " There is construction on the tracks heading south you will need to switch trains to the 2,3, or 4 if you want to continue heading south. This will be our final stop." Switch trains again, more stairs, more heat. Finally find our new train. Ride 2 stops. It doesn't go any further because of construction. So we hop off to find a whole new line. The green line this time. Green for go.
Or not, we wandered up and down stairs for about 20 min and finally asked someone who led us in the wrong but eventually right direction if we could've understood the signs. As soon as we found the green docking station there was a lady with an orange construction vest that told us if we wanted to go downtown that we needed to go and jump on the red line. The same one that told us to go to the green line. Obviously, the communication problem wasn't just with the passengers. . . I told Bryan that i gave up. I didn't really want to see the Statue of Liberty anyway. It has stood in that harbor for 100 years and it would probably be there in the next couple years for us to come back and see.
We hopped on the nearest train going to Grand Central Station and headed home. The nearest train was down a flight of stairs, up another, and then down 2 more. . .

2 comments:

Bryan Williams said...

You missed a couple of transfers. And the lady who told us to go back and take the J train uptown, which confused even a lot of the locals.

Look on the bright side love, we learned a whole ton about the NYC subway system.

I bet if we did it again it would go a lot smoother. I just feel bad for those people who live on Staten Island. We could at least find our way back home. I hope they found their way around the mess.

Steve Williams said...

Yuck, that definately sounds crappy, especially when you are toting a baby around, that little extra weight tends to add up! Well hopefully next time will be a better experience! (this is Jaime btw)