Well, from my boring perspective, anyway. Hubway shuts most of its network down in the winter and I exercise a strict bike riding cutoff of about thirty-five degrees. These two facts mean I spend a lot more time on buses and subways during our winter months.
A few strange little incidents marked my return to full-time riding on the T. Can't figure out what to make of these so I'll just list them:
1) For the first time ever, I rode a Green Line 'express' train. I've done this before on the Red Line but never on the ancient trolley system. I'm still a little stunned that this actually happened.
Despite its 'express' status, the train remained subject to basic traffic law such as red lights. So, it did not move all that fast. But we did skip about six stops, all of them at BU. Why does BU get six stops? It doesn't matter. Anytime we can skip BU, I'm all for it.
2) Over two consecutive weeks, I ran into the same former colleague while riding the Red Line into South Boston. Running into someone on the train once in a lifetime is crazy enough- to do so twice, at separate times of the day on different days of the week, is mind-boggling. Surely, I enter 2017 with my karma stores depleted.
3) One night, I spotted a ten dollar bill lying under a seat on the Green Line. To give you non-Bostonians some perspective, that's about a beer and a half at the bar down the street or enough money to cover approximately twenty-seven minutes of rent. My lucky day!
As I started to walk over to pick it up, a man sat in the seat, unknowingly placed his foot directly on top of the bill, and fell asleep. Well, let's say he 'fell' asleep.
It was the kind of sleep that you see all the time on the subway- chin to chest, headphones in, eyes pressed too tightly shut to actually be asleep. In short, it was the kind of 'sleeping' you do when you don't want to talk to a soul.
I spent the next three stops thinking of different ways to handle the situation. I finally decided to just wait and hope he got off the train before me. He didn't, so I left the train, equally wealthy as to when I boarded it, a new lightness in my wallet nevertheless.
4) While eating dinner with a former colleague, I was reminded that he had once seen all three of the escalators at Porter Square broken down at the same time. Everyone apparently walked up (or down) all two thousand eight hundred and twenty-six steps (another approximation).
I cannot state how much I would have paid to witness this- at least the ten dollars that guy's foot slept ('slept') on. I still can't believe that guy slept on my money!
