The end of the first day of the strike came and I had to decide what route I was
going to take home. Do I dare try the buses again? Do I walk to midtown and try
to catch a different bus there? I left at about 4:00, an hour after most other
people left because they wanted to get on the buses early since they started
running again at 3:00. I went downstairs to catch one at 4:00 and people in
line said that no buses had showed up yet, so I guess the wrinkles hadn't been
ironed out yet. I was annoyed and fed up, so I decided to try walking home. It
turns out that it only took me an hour to walk home! That's roughly twice as
long as my commute, but that's still not too bad in my opinion. It was actually
kinda nice to get out and stretch my legs at the end of the shortened day and
listen to everyone on the street talk about the whole event. It made it
somewhat adventurous.
Day two of the strike came and again I had decisions to make. Rollerblades?
Buses? Walking? I was going to rollerblade, but the idea of going up a few
steep hills before arriving at work didn't sound hygenically friendly, so I
decided to try some permutations of my plans and headed up to 96th Street,
where cars were being checked to make sure they had four people in the car
before being allowed to enter the city. I heard that people were offering free
rides to other people if they would get in the car so that they would have the
four people necessary to pass. I thought this would be an easy way to get to
the bridge and I could make the 1/2 hour walk from there. As I got closer, I
noticed that there was a giant bus from my employer there, so that was even
better. I climbed aboard and thought maybe everything was running smoothly and
I could get a ride all the way to the office after making a bus connection in
mid-town. Things were going well until I hit 70th St. (I live on 91st) and the
traffic <b>stopped</b>. I dozed off a few times and woke up for good when we
neared the bridge at 59th St. It had taken an <b>hour</b> just to get there
because the traffic was so bad. I coulda been at work if I had walked! Some of
the other employees convinced the driver to let us off and it was another 1/2
walk over the bridge. But still much better than the previous day.
For the ride home, again, more permutations. There was a bus waiting out front
going to mid-town that I figured I'd take. Should be a quick ride over the
bridge, right? Wrong. The bus, for some unknown reason, decided the fastest way
to get to 53rd St. was to drive to the other side of Queens and take the Midtown
tunnel across the river to 34th St. and then drive up in massive congestion to
53rd St. rather than driving two blocks to the bridge, crossing it, and
entering Manhattan at 59th St, just a few blocks from 53rd! Good lord. So I
wasted about 30-40 minutes on that trip and ended up getting off early on 42nd
St. and walking home from there, which took me another hour. At this point, I
wasn't going to mess with traffic or the streets, my legs be damned! It was
coooold last night, too, which didn't make things too fun...
J. Riley, This is still an adventurous experience, but I'm getting worried about
finding my way to the airport on Friday....
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