Trains Through the Tropics
As many of you know, I am spending time in New York this week taking depositions. The trip started yesterday morning at 4 a.m., when I got up in DC to make the 6 a.m. Acela. I took the 6 a.m. train so that I could get to Newark, New Jersey in time to take a deposition starting at 10 a.m. It was a foggy, humid morning, and by the time ths sun came up we were around Baltimore and the fog was thick. Visibility was virtually nothing, and as the train went through thickets of green undergrowth and over various tributaries of the Anactostia, Patuxent and Severn Rivers, the fog grew even thicker. The undergrowth was bright green still, not the tired dark green of late summer. I was in the Quiet Car so it was perfectly silent and ghostly smoky and foggy outside. It was like being in a movie. In the Quiet Car, one is much more aware of every noise the train itself makes. There was a persistent squeak somewhere in the car, and as the tropical undergrowth outside grew thicker, and as I grew sleepier and sleepier, I began to think the rattle was a very large toucan, maybe a 100 pound toucan, sitting in the back of the car singing. I fell sound asleep. By the time we got to Philadelphia I was out like a light.
The law firm I was going to in Newark turned out to be physically attached to the Newark train station, via a long mid-air walkway. I only learned this after I found the building, however, and in the meantime I went out onto the desolate Newark Streets with my luggage and walked through construction sites, jack hammer zones, bus lines and bitter traffic spewing dust and smoke. My wheelie was hard to wheel over all the ruts in the sidewalks. My feet were hurting, having expanded into four times their normal size during my nap on the train. By now the sun was all the way up, the fog was gone, and it had turned into a sweltering steamy day. Eventually I found the building. There was no coffee shop in the lobby. !!!!! The deposition room was high up in the building with a commanding view out over Newark, such as it is. The sky was gray and I got the impression that Newark is made almost entirely of above ground parking lots. The view and the journey together gave me a headache.
After the deposition, I took a few more trains to get to my hotel in Manhattan. I asked the videographer -- who was born and raised in northern New Jersey -- what the best way into the City (the real City) was. He said to take the PATH train to 33rd street. I said "Great! Where do I get the nearest PATH train?" He said, "Oh, it's fabulous, you don't even havse to leave the buildling." "huh?" "Yeah, the Amtrak station is attached to this building -- didn't you know?" So that's how I learned I could've walked in air conditioned splendor, above the streets, instead of I walked battling Tony Soprano's buddies on the street.
The PATH train turns out to be an exceedingly slow train to Manhattan and it passes throughout virtually unheard-of parts of New Jersey. It costs $1.50 (cheaper than the subway, now) and between Newark and Manhattan it makes something like seventeen thousands stops. You wouldn't think there were that many places to stop between Newark and New York. These are stops that are seemed to me to be practically in the bottom of the Meadowlands. I think were were essentially tunnelling through swamps the whole time. Outside the windows of the train I thought I saw clouds of mosquitos rising up in front of us. I saw expansive vistas of swamp grass. I saw industrial things in the distance -- power plants and chemical storage tanks. I saw perfectly still, brown water all around us. The sun was motionless in the sky. I sweated through the Stylish Black Nylon Topcoat I was wearing, the one I bought for the foggy weather in San Francisco. We stopped at towns that I don't think appear on any maps. A place called "Journal Square." Another place called "Grove Street." No-one got on at any of these stops; no-one got off, either. People sat slack-jawed as each of the non-existent places passed. The only place I recognized was the Harrison, NJ stop. At one point we stopped at a place allegedly on the New York/New Jersey line. That struck me as impossible -- how could there be a town on the line -- the line is in the middle of the Hudson River? Once we reached Manhattan we crawled up the lower West Side. The silly PATH train stops in known locations -- like Christopher Street, and 14th Street -- but doesn't appear to connect to any subway line. Finally we got to 33rd Street, and I got off, looking for the subway.
By this time I was very hot, very tired, and my luggage was very heavy. Also, my feet were really quite huge. It was humorous to try to walk in normal sized shoes when your feet have developed elephantiasis. I decided to take the N/R train to 57th Street (my hotel is between 58th and 59th). This was another journey though the tropics. I continued to sweat as I hauled my luggage around to the ticket booth. As many of you know, subway tokens are a thing of the past, so now you have to buy something very much like a DC metro card. Then I had to figure out how to get my luggage through the turnstile. Then I had to haul my luggage up the stairs and over the platgform to get to the uptown side. Then I rested. Then, at 57th Street, I hauled it out and hauled it through another turnstile (very difficult) and hauled it up onto the street, only to find I had sutpidly used the 55th Street exit instead. So I began hauling my luggage and my over-sized feet around the now quite steamy streets (or so it seemed to me). Finally, I began to just walk through the lobbies of air conditioned office buildings. I would enter a building on 55th Street, walk all the way through, with a knowing stride so that no security people stopped me, and then I would exit the building on 56th Street. I would promptly cross 56th street and enter the building right across the way. By the third building, a nice man started opening doors for me. He seemed to understand that it would be wasteful to walk all the way to end of the block and use the public thoroughfare. The last building I walked through dumped me out on 58th Street, and the next entrance across the street was my hotel.
I checked in and changed into jeans and comfortable walking shoes. It was only 2 p.m. I felt I had been travelling through the tropics for an eternity.
My final act of the day was to go to our firm's office and borrow a power cord for my laptop, which I had stupidly left at home. I was much more comfortable in jeans and hiking shoes and a baseball cap. I walked back up to the hotel and walked through the Park. It was very sunny and warm. I wandered a ways in, past the zoo, past the ice skating rink. I found a quiet plot of grass and lots of looming trees. I lay on my back on the plot of grass, among some tulips and ginko trees, I put my power cord under my still swollen feet and my baseball cap over my face and I took an hour nap as the city carried on around me. It was wonderful.
The law firm I was going to in Newark turned out to be physically attached to the Newark train station, via a long mid-air walkway. I only learned this after I found the building, however, and in the meantime I went out onto the desolate Newark Streets with my luggage and walked through construction sites, jack hammer zones, bus lines and bitter traffic spewing dust and smoke. My wheelie was hard to wheel over all the ruts in the sidewalks. My feet were hurting, having expanded into four times their normal size during my nap on the train. By now the sun was all the way up, the fog was gone, and it had turned into a sweltering steamy day. Eventually I found the building. There was no coffee shop in the lobby. !!!!! The deposition room was high up in the building with a commanding view out over Newark, such as it is. The sky was gray and I got the impression that Newark is made almost entirely of above ground parking lots. The view and the journey together gave me a headache.
After the deposition, I took a few more trains to get to my hotel in Manhattan. I asked the videographer -- who was born and raised in northern New Jersey -- what the best way into the City (the real City) was. He said to take the PATH train to 33rd street. I said "Great! Where do I get the nearest PATH train?" He said, "Oh, it's fabulous, you don't even havse to leave the buildling." "huh?" "Yeah, the Amtrak station is attached to this building -- didn't you know?" So that's how I learned I could've walked in air conditioned splendor, above the streets, instead of I walked battling Tony Soprano's buddies on the street.
The PATH train turns out to be an exceedingly slow train to Manhattan and it passes throughout virtually unheard-of parts of New Jersey. It costs $1.50 (cheaper than the subway, now) and between Newark and Manhattan it makes something like seventeen thousands stops. You wouldn't think there were that many places to stop between Newark and New York. These are stops that are seemed to me to be practically in the bottom of the Meadowlands. I think were were essentially tunnelling through swamps the whole time. Outside the windows of the train I thought I saw clouds of mosquitos rising up in front of us. I saw expansive vistas of swamp grass. I saw industrial things in the distance -- power plants and chemical storage tanks. I saw perfectly still, brown water all around us. The sun was motionless in the sky. I sweated through the Stylish Black Nylon Topcoat I was wearing, the one I bought for the foggy weather in San Francisco. We stopped at towns that I don't think appear on any maps. A place called "Journal Square." Another place called "Grove Street." No-one got on at any of these stops; no-one got off, either. People sat slack-jawed as each of the non-existent places passed. The only place I recognized was the Harrison, NJ stop. At one point we stopped at a place allegedly on the New York/New Jersey line. That struck me as impossible -- how could there be a town on the line -- the line is in the middle of the Hudson River? Once we reached Manhattan we crawled up the lower West Side. The silly PATH train stops in known locations -- like Christopher Street, and 14th Street -- but doesn't appear to connect to any subway line. Finally we got to 33rd Street, and I got off, looking for the subway.
By this time I was very hot, very tired, and my luggage was very heavy. Also, my feet were really quite huge. It was humorous to try to walk in normal sized shoes when your feet have developed elephantiasis. I decided to take the N/R train to 57th Street (my hotel is between 58th and 59th). This was another journey though the tropics. I continued to sweat as I hauled my luggage around to the ticket booth. As many of you know, subway tokens are a thing of the past, so now you have to buy something very much like a DC metro card. Then I had to figure out how to get my luggage through the turnstile. Then I had to haul my luggage up the stairs and over the platgform to get to the uptown side. Then I rested. Then, at 57th Street, I hauled it out and hauled it through another turnstile (very difficult) and hauled it up onto the street, only to find I had sutpidly used the 55th Street exit instead. So I began hauling my luggage and my over-sized feet around the now quite steamy streets (or so it seemed to me). Finally, I began to just walk through the lobbies of air conditioned office buildings. I would enter a building on 55th Street, walk all the way through, with a knowing stride so that no security people stopped me, and then I would exit the building on 56th Street. I would promptly cross 56th street and enter the building right across the way. By the third building, a nice man started opening doors for me. He seemed to understand that it would be wasteful to walk all the way to end of the block and use the public thoroughfare. The last building I walked through dumped me out on 58th Street, and the next entrance across the street was my hotel.
I checked in and changed into jeans and comfortable walking shoes. It was only 2 p.m. I felt I had been travelling through the tropics for an eternity.
My final act of the day was to go to our firm's office and borrow a power cord for my laptop, which I had stupidly left at home. I was much more comfortable in jeans and hiking shoes and a baseball cap. I walked back up to the hotel and walked through the Park. It was very sunny and warm. I wandered a ways in, past the zoo, past the ice skating rink. I found a quiet plot of grass and lots of looming trees. I lay on my back on the plot of grass, among some tulips and ginko trees, I put my power cord under my still swollen feet and my baseball cap over my face and I took an hour nap as the city carried on around me. It was wonderful.
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