Iron rails & iron weights

Tuesday, May 6, 2008
11:36:00 PM EDT
Maybe the sheeple were right ... or were they?

Ugh, Monday mornings.  They're bad enough under the best of circumstances, today my latent masochism almost made things much worse.  I got the shuttle from Medford as usual, but once at Ronkonkoma decided for some inexplicable reason to take the 7:04 cattle train, er, express, rather than the usually less crowded Flatbush Avenue train.  Yep, must be masochism.  Riding the 7:04 puts me at great risk of being squashed by SCA's.  I really dodged a bullet today, however, with a man who was only slightly larger than average taking the seat next to me at Deer Park.  Like many SCA's, he was soft, if not quite overweight.  He left me with enough room, though it was a close call, and I cell phone Tetris'ed most of the way into Penn.  I missed a 1 train to Houston Street by a few seconds, but it worked out okay because another train came along in just a few minutes and, not surprisingly given the close spacing, was nicely uncrowded.

I walked to Penn after work, nearly getting run over in the station concourse by a disfigured skell - he scarcely had anything remotely resembling a human face - who was pushing his wheelchair across the floor using his feet.  You really get some characters in Penn.  As I was heading to Track 19 to get the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma, the station PA announced that the next train to arrive on Track 19 would be going to the yards, with the 5:41 to be the following train.  Pretty clear, right?  Moments later, which was about 5:30 or so, a train arrived from the east on Track 19 and discharged its passengers.  As always, there were hundreds of people waiting on the platform to board the 5:41, clustered in their cows-at-the-slaughterhouse-chute half-moon.  No sooner did the last people get off the train than almost all of the waiting passengers rushed onto the train to claim their "prime" seats.  But wait!  Hadn't the station PA announced, several times by now, that this train would be going to the yards?  Why was everybody boarding.  I stayed on the platform, along with a disturbingly small number of other people, figuring that the people who'd rushed onto the train would have to get off when the train crew announced that it was going to the yards.  They didn't listen to the station PA, hopefully they'd pay more attention to the train crew.  Well, after a minute or so, the train conductor announced over the train PA that there'd been a change of plans and that the train indeed would be going to Ronkonkoma after all.  The people who'd boarded it, sheeple-style in disregard of the station PA announcements, were right after all.  Superior knowledge, or just dumb luck?  Whatever the case, I boarded the train hoping against hope that I wouldn't have to stand the whole way.  I was lucky, finding an aisle seat next to an older woman, and spent the ride to Ronkonkoma pondering whether I'd been smart or dumb to have listened to the station PA.  It was an easy enough ride to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle.

Gym: Today turned out to be a clone of yesterday.  After some work on the speed bag I started running on the treadmill at my usual 6.0 mph.  After 2.5 miles yesterday I figured I'd do 1.5 miles today.  As I approached that mark I had enough energy that I decided to go for two miles, and as that greater mark came within sight I still had enough in me to go a bit more.  When all was said and done I did 2.5 miles, just like yesterday, and met my 6-mile weekly quota after just three days.


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