strange experience

[unforth]

I had a meeting at Queens College today. Getting there involves taking a bus (or walking, which I did) to thw 231st st. 1 station, taking the 1 to 42nd Street, switching to the 7, taking it from it's first stop to the last stop at Flushing/Main St., getting on another bus, and finally arriving on Kissena Blvd and walking a block or two to the right building. Put another way, it took 2.5 hours to get there.

Things got interesting on my return trip, when I discovered that they had suspended all 7 service to the Main St. Stop. I thought, no problem, just go to Willets Pt. It's not too long a walk (a little under a mile) and I've done it before (Willets Pt. Is the train stop for Citifield, so I'm there semi-often). But they tell me there's no service there, either.

Well, shit.

I emerge from the train station into the biggest cluster fuck I've seen since I was at Inauguration, and there's a bus that is going to LGA. Fine, I think, I know how to get to Manhattan from the airport, I'll get on that.

There are so many more people standing there then will fit on that bus, but I actually manage to be the very last person they let on - just in time to hear that there IS 7 service at Willets Pt. So I get off the bus, and then am told by a nice lady (people in nuts situations always respond well to simple human politeness, and I had moments before distinguished myself by shouting - to general nods and approving smiles - that people should stop pushing cause it wasn't helping). Anyway, the nice lady tells me that they've restored service, so back down I go...and they haven't. Sigh.

By this point I'm a little turned around, so I ask the lady at the train station to point me to Willets Pt., and I proceeded to walk.

At first, I was a bit slow cause I was on the phone with mom asking if she could try to find out what was going on (she couldn't - she was in the bath) and when I got off the phone, I put in my head phones and went back to my normal speed (passing most of the other folks also going there, though I noticed one guy keeping up with me out of the corner of my eye).

I got to Willets Pt. Just in time to run up the stairs, dash up a ramp...and just a miss a train.

A moment later, as I waited, a man breathing really hard flagged me down.

"Do you walk marathons??" He asks me breathlessly.

It turns out he'd overheard me ask the lady at Main St the way, and since he didn't know it, decided to follow me (the man I'd oticed out of the corner of my eye) and was simply amazed not only that I walked so fast, but that I did it so effortlessly. I explained that I walked a lot normally (annd that I'd already been to the gym and walked two+ miles today!) And had walked a half-marathon once. He said that people I passed often looked amazed as I went by.

It was a very different perspective than I normally get (he didn't look in bad shape, but he was winded by following me about a mile!) And it fit in with an experience I had this morning at the gym.

I'm in pretty good shape. I don't look it, but I am. And that feels nice, both physically and emotionally. Also, it was really flattering to hear this guy. :)

Just wanted to share - we're going underground, so I gotta go. :)

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that story has a silver lining. Go you!

[ultimabaka.livejournal.com]

I lost my breath just reading that :P

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

For future ease-of-getting to Queens, take the Bx9 down Broadway to the Q44 at Boston Road. Far fewer transfers to deal with. Though on the other hand, that bus probably takes *forever* to get through the what, ten blocks, of Fordham Road.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, on Monday I took the Bx9 to a meeting I had at 1 Fordham Plaza, and I literally could have walked there faster than the bus went. But if the Q44 goes to QC, maybe I'll walk to the Q44 - it'd still take less than 2.5 hours, I bet...so thanks. :)

[galiyah.livejournal.com]

Awesome. :)