Gone in 90 Seconds

The last 2 days were oddly reminiscent of the Asheville trip, in that there was lots of fuss in the run up to travel, but everything ended up being pretty much routine. I went to Connecticut to see my mom and dad. My train was at 9:18 and I normally leave the house at around 7:40, drop my daughter at 8, and get home around 8:20. I expected to stop home and organize myself, then head to the station, but I grabbed the important stuff as I left, just in case. As it turned out, today was a case. Lincoln Drive had several accidents on it, which led to delays in both directions and assorted traffic going everywhere trying to detour. As a result, we didn’t get to school until 8:20, but I wasn’t worried because I still had an hour and I could have walked to the station in an hour.

Needless to say, it was impossible to get back to the city, and as I headed toward the last refuge of the vehicularly challenged, Germantown Avenue, at 8:50, I called Amtrak and changed to a later train. Then the miraculous happened and the traffic disappeared and I was suddenly sailing toward the station at 9. At this point, I’m in serious grumble mode, because I know I’m going to arrive at the parking lot at around 9:12 and be in time to either just make or just miss the train. So I figure I’ll call Amtrak, wait on hold for a few minutes, and by the time I get an agent I’ll be there and know whether or not I’m on time.

As I write this it sounds preposterous, because it is, but it actually worked. I pulled into the parking lot and just as I crossed over to the station an agent picked up, as I entered the station at 9:15. Changing the reservation was delayed because he misunderstood the spelling of my name, but it got changed over at 9:17 and I got my tickets and as Iwalked down the stairs to the platform I could see the train was pulling into the station. I am not exaggerating at all.

Oh, and by the way, traffic reports suck.

Then on the way home, I get a late start and feel like I have a very slight chance of making my return train, so I call Amtrak once again and ask if I should change reservations again, but they say there’s plenty of space on the next 2 trains and to just do it at the ticket office. Plus the train is running 3 minutes late. I rush to Stamford. I know that every Amtrak train to Stamford is 5 minutes late. I think this is because they routinely schedule a commuter train at the same time as the Amtrak one and they don't want them to bump into each other. So I’m closing in on the station and I see that it’s 5 minutes past train time, and again go into grumble mode, but then I look at my cell phone and see that the clock in the car is 5 minutes fast. I drop off my car, sprint up to the ticket office, which looks closed. I peer around a curtain and see a woman reading a book. It’s the ticket agent. She says, don’t worry, you still have a couple of minutes. I get my ticket, go down to the track, and this time the train appears as I take my place on the platform.

So it was all routine. I made 2 trains with a combined total of about 90 seconds to spare, but I’m home.