Okay, so maybe it wasn't a very good idea to leave Boston for New York on the Bolt Bus at 3:00 pm on the Friday of the weekend before Christmas. We didn't hit rush hour traffic in New York but we did in New Haven, Stamford, Hartford and whatever other places you come through on that route, so the bus was an hour and five minutes late when it got to 34th and Eighth at 8:05.
No way on earth to get a cab but I gave it a go anyway walking up Eighth, finally giving in at 42nd Street and deciding to take the subway. I managed to lose my temporary old person's reduced MTA pass, so was using the official photo ID one for the first time, with no luck whatsoever when I swiped it through a turnstile. Maybe there's no $$ on it, I thought, although dimly remembering I'd put a big $10 on it with an automatic refill.
Nothing to do but buy a full price Metrocard, but being as thrifty, money-conscious or cheap, whatever you want to call it, as I am, I wanted to spend as little as possible and fumbled around for two dollar bills and a quarter to get a Single Ride card and after waiting 15 minutes for a train, got to 86th and Broadway where I could use the card to take the crosstown bus to a block and a half from my apartment.
Another long wait, but eventually the bus arrived and I got on, stuck my newly purchased Metrocard into the slot and "Already Used" shows up on the LED monitor. "But I just bought it" I say, straw sticking out of my hair, rosy cheeks shining in the wintry air. "I just bought it 20 minutes ago." "What does it say there?" says the bus driver. "Already Used," I say, going on to repeat "But I just bought it 20 minutes ago."
"What does it say on the front?" says the bus driver, and, with as much dignity as I can muster under the circumstances, I'm forced to say "I don't know. I didn't have my glasses on." "Single ride," he says. "Single ride. No transfers." Shit, I think, I don't belong in New York any more I'm so clueless, I don't belong in Cambridge sleeping in the hallway, I don't belong anywhere any more, I'm this nomadic nothing, and I turn and go back down the front steps of the bus and walk to the corner of 86th and Broadway ready to hail the next available cab.
There's a honking from the bus and the driver is beckoning me to get back on, so I climb up the steps one more time and he gestures for me to go towards the back of the bus and take a seat - my natal Saturn Neptune square kicking in and coming to my rescue, I suppose it being obvious to him that I am a clueless out-of-towner groping my way through the labyrinth of rules and regulations of the big city and taking the bus back to Pumpkin Center at the end of the week and not some conniving manipulating very street-wise New Yorker.
"Ah, that's nice of him" says a woman on my left as I walk down the aisle to find a seat. "He's giving you a chance," the meaning of which I'm still trying to figure out but who cares, nice city bus driver took pity on poor pitiful Just-Got-Off-The-Bus farm-girl and only seven-and-a-half hours after I left XXX Concord Avenue, I arrived at 1674 First Avenue to find my wireless mouse had decided to die and I had no way to read email or the Daily Mail and the only thing to do really was to go to bed.
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