mary-masked

On Monkey's Paw Wishes and the Perils of Travel

Published: July 6th 2017, 11:14:40 pm

As I was booking my bus trip from N.Y. to Philly to DC and back I thought "Man, I hope that someday I'll have the money to take trains instead of buses." The wish seemed small enough that I might get it. Someday. But then as I was waiting outside in the rain for my megabus that would get me to DC by 10pm, I got an email saying the bus would be "2-3 hours late." Still sunburnt from my recent bolt bus experience where my 10:15 bus didn't arrive until 11:30, I assumed this estimate to be optimistic at best. I went inside the train station so I would at least no longer be wearing flip flops in the rain. But then I quickly broke down and walked to the Amtrak counter and asked what their cheapest ticket to the station nearest my parents would be. It was fifty six dollars. It would get me there by 8pm. I thought about the mega bus and its optimistic expectations of getting me to my parent's house around 1-2am, assuming no one killed me on my way to the metro. I thought about the client meetings I had scheduled tomorrow that started at 9 am tomorrow and ended just in time for me to take a 5 hour bus ride home. I thought about the fact that I'd gotten up at 5:30 a.m. to get 17 pelvic exams from student nurses, on a day when my lube bottle was perilously low. And voila, suddenly, I *had* the money to take the damn train. Looking out the window, I foolishly thought "the veiw from the train is so nice, I wish I could take some photos." So now the train is stopped. And I don't know for how long. I can't really hear the conductor. I think he said something about sex with cat hair. Kind of a nice photo though.