Iron rails & iron weights

Tuesday, May 13, 2008
9:45:00 PM EDT
A Harry Potter experience

One thing I've noticed in my years of LIRR riding is that there's a strong direct relationship between the obnoxiousness of a fellow rider and the extent to which I later remember him or her.  If I'm squashed next to an elephantine SCA I'll recall all sorts of details about him - the style of his suit, the newspaper in which he read the sports pages, the degree to which his jowls bounced around, you name it.  Today exemplified the opposite.  After arriving on the shuttle from Medford I took the 7:04 express from Ronkonkoma to Penn.  Yeah, I know, it's a cattle train that should always be avoided.  What can I say?  At any rate, a woman sat next to me at Farmingdale, and being that she was neither large nor otherwise annoying she made almost no impression on my memory.  It dawned on me, soon after we got to Penn and I exited the train, that if asked I could not give any more than a very rough estimate of her age (late 20's or thereabouts) or attire (light top, dark pants, I think), and certainly couldn't identify her out of a lineup.  And this is, of course, a good thing.  When it comes to train riding, memorable experiences are almost always bad ones! Speaking of Penn, for the first time in months I used the "Hilton Passageway" to get to the subway station.  It's one of the very few remnants of the old Penn Station, otherwise demolished in the early 1960's.  Using it makes it easy to board the 1 train toward the front of the consist, which worked well for me because I wanted to go to the post office on Varick Street and it's located right by the south exit from the Houston Street station.

I walked to Penn after work and got the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma.  A 40-something woman sat next to me and soon began chatting away on her cell phone.  I had been listening to my iPod but soon shut it off because the charge was almost gone, but didn't bother removing the ear buds.  The woman must have figured I'd be unable to overhear her conversation, because she then placed a call and kept glancing at me to make sure the ear buds were still in place.  She was telling a friend or relative about the boss at her prior job, who kept threatening her with lawsuits over use of company information.  She seemed fairly dismissive of the threats, noting that she hadn't signed a nondisclosure agreement and in any event wasn't revealing anything confidential at her new job, but nonetheless said it was a hassle having to deal with them.  She definitely seemed to think the ex-boss was more than a little crazy.  What was especially amusing was that she didn't mention the ex-boss's name, repeatedly calling him "you know who."  All I could think of was how the Harry Potter stories refer to Lord Voldemort as "He Who Cannot Be Named," if I recall that correctly. I guess she was afraid that using his name would summon demons, or something.  Hey, I'm not complaining, it made the trip to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle zip right by.

Gym: I did four 3-minute rounds on the heavy bag, hitting it pretty well if I may say so, and then ran 1.5 miles on the treadmill at 6.0 mph.


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