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Conductor, stop this train
I was right not to be confident. Because as I approached Park Street on my return from the green-and-purple-PVS land of dental consultation, I observed that the station was surrounded by a crowd of people milling around on the cold bright pavements of Tremont Street, many of them on their phones, none of them actually descending the stairs to the subway. A woman approaching on a similar vector to me said out loud, "That doesn't look good." I agreed it didn't. People in cold weather don't usually linger aboveground if they have a train to catch in an even minimally warmer environment. We went down cautiously. The station was a maelstrom. There were people milling in front of the turnstiles; there were people milling behind the turnstiles; there were people asking each other questions, none of which anyone seemed to have the answers to; I caught one man in an orange safety vest saying there were no buses at this time, but they expected to have the problem resolved very soon now, which my new companion agreed was not the most reassuring thing to hear, especially the vagueness of "problem." Eventually I approached a man in a watch cap and MBTA jacket who was on our side of the turnstiles—near the stairs to the Red Line, where the behind-the-turnstiles crowd was densest—and asked him straight out. He said there was a police emergency downstairs; the Red Line was suspending service indefinitely and the station was temporarily shut down. (I learned after the fact it was a bomb scare. Oddly, in the moment I thought he must mean an arrest or pursuit.) Shuttle buses were being organized, but they weren't ready yet. It was unclear how much the Green Line was running: which directions, which trains. My companion and I gave mutual thanks that we hadn't already paid our fares and began planning our fallbacks. She was planning to walk to Downtown Crossing and try re-routing through the Orange Line. I said I had to call someone who could look at buses on their phone. We wished each other well. I went aboveground and called ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel: "It's four o'clock, it's fifteen degrees out here, and I don't have sunglasses. Give me walking directions."
I walked to Lechmere.
I am not physically comfortable in cold weather. My circulation has been rotten since college; my hands go numb easily, my fingers blanch, stiffen, hurt like crazy, I notice it less with my feet only because I wear hiking boots all the time. My uncle was diagnosed with primary Raynaud's some years ago and ever since then I've assumed it's the same thing, especially since my brother started showing the same sensitivities around the same age. I lost my very good pair of gloves last winter and this morning I couldn't find one of the makeshift stretchy pair I'd been using this fall, so I had to leave the house without any gloves at all. That was painful but fine for walking from my doorstep to the Davis T station, carrying a pad of paper to take notes on and Mark Valentine and John Howard's The Collected Connoisseur (2010) in case I was left to my own devices at the dentist's for any length of time. Walking for thirty minutes from Park Street to Lechmere as the sun was setting was somewhat more problematic. I ended up stuffing the paper and the book inside my jacket just so I could get both hands into my pockets, because after a few minutes in the open air it was impossible for me to text from my phone and even dialing was becoming difficult. Tremont Street to Cambridge, Cambridge to Staniford, Staniford to Lomasney, and then past Science Park and the Museum of Science to Lechmere. I texted Rob: The canal beside the Science Museum is intensely beautiful in the burnt dusk. (It was a lovely day, in the clear bone-chilling way of winter: previous updates had included Beautiful winter sunlight: very bright, very dry. Downtown Boston looks good in it. Well, except for City Hall and Strong blue-gold light now, already fading. Church bells.) Even in my pockets, flexing them to keep the blood moving, I could feel very little of my fingers by the time I got to Lechmere; my back was in a kind of shuddering lock and my face had that blasted, glassy feeling you get from walking into freezing wind. Last night and tonight have been the temperatures I refer to as dumbass cold, where all of your intellectual concentration goes to repeating stupidly, "It's cold out here! It's really cold! I am so cold!" while all of your planning abilities are funneled into getting out of the cold, with not much left over for intelligent discourse. And I felt a lot better about it than about waiting at Park Street, equally chilled, much less in motion, for buses that might or might not be organized in time to get me home and warm faster than my own feet to Lechmere and either the 80 or the 87 from there.
Lechmere was another maelstrom. With an awesome stationmaster. Faced with the day's normal commuters plus an overflow of cold, confused Red Line refugees queueing for buses that weren't supposed to leave for another twenty minutes on the schedule, he threw out the schedule and started scrambling drivers: "Get Laura out here! Get Judy! I got all these people! You going to Davis Square? You going to Somerville Ave? Give the lady a hand with that—thank you!" Out of service buses were pulled back into service. Drivers were pulled off break. He asked for people's destinations and told them the buses they needed, gave them walking directions from unfamiliar stops, suggested transfers, made sure one woman got safely onto her bus with all her luggage. (It was my bus, but she was behind me; I couldn't see if she was older, frail, or just handling heavy and awkward bags. She got off before me, though, and the same spirit prevailed on the bus: I heard people calling, making sure someone had got all her stuff, making sure she'd got all her stuff, before the doors closed.) He was loud and stressed and efficient and I didn't have a chance to thank him; he moved off too quickly into the crowd. I shouted it anyway. He was amazing to see in action. I got on an 87 that was packed to tinning capacity—driven by Laura, who waved me on without asking for fare—and I got off in Porter Square, where I bought an herbal chai latte with a shot of pumpkin syrup instantly. Rob met me a few minutes later. We had planned on grocery shopping; instead I just bought some conditioner so that I could take a very hot shower tonight and headed back into Davis for dinner before he left for rehearsal. It was a full hour and a half later than I'd planned. I got home at 6:40. I've been sitting here drinking tea since. I believe that was an adventure.
I've been married for a week.
derspatchel: "It's four o'clock, it's fifteen degrees out here, and I don't have sunglasses. Give me walking directions."I walked to Lechmere.
I am not physically comfortable in cold weather. My circulation has been rotten since college; my hands go numb easily, my fingers blanch, stiffen, hurt like crazy, I notice it less with my feet only because I wear hiking boots all the time. My uncle was diagnosed with primary Raynaud's some years ago and ever since then I've assumed it's the same thing, especially since my brother started showing the same sensitivities around the same age. I lost my very good pair of gloves last winter and this morning I couldn't find one of the makeshift stretchy pair I'd been using this fall, so I had to leave the house without any gloves at all. That was painful but fine for walking from my doorstep to the Davis T station, carrying a pad of paper to take notes on and Mark Valentine and John Howard's The Collected Connoisseur (2010) in case I was left to my own devices at the dentist's for any length of time. Walking for thirty minutes from Park Street to Lechmere as the sun was setting was somewhat more problematic. I ended up stuffing the paper and the book inside my jacket just so I could get both hands into my pockets, because after a few minutes in the open air it was impossible for me to text from my phone and even dialing was becoming difficult. Tremont Street to Cambridge, Cambridge to Staniford, Staniford to Lomasney, and then past Science Park and the Museum of Science to Lechmere. I texted Rob: The canal beside the Science Museum is intensely beautiful in the burnt dusk. (It was a lovely day, in the clear bone-chilling way of winter: previous updates had included Beautiful winter sunlight: very bright, very dry. Downtown Boston looks good in it. Well, except for City Hall and Strong blue-gold light now, already fading. Church bells.) Even in my pockets, flexing them to keep the blood moving, I could feel very little of my fingers by the time I got to Lechmere; my back was in a kind of shuddering lock and my face had that blasted, glassy feeling you get from walking into freezing wind. Last night and tonight have been the temperatures I refer to as dumbass cold, where all of your intellectual concentration goes to repeating stupidly, "It's cold out here! It's really cold! I am so cold!" while all of your planning abilities are funneled into getting out of the cold, with not much left over for intelligent discourse. And I felt a lot better about it than about waiting at Park Street, equally chilled, much less in motion, for buses that might or might not be organized in time to get me home and warm faster than my own feet to Lechmere and either the 80 or the 87 from there.
Lechmere was another maelstrom. With an awesome stationmaster. Faced with the day's normal commuters plus an overflow of cold, confused Red Line refugees queueing for buses that weren't supposed to leave for another twenty minutes on the schedule, he threw out the schedule and started scrambling drivers: "Get Laura out here! Get Judy! I got all these people! You going to Davis Square? You going to Somerville Ave? Give the lady a hand with that—thank you!" Out of service buses were pulled back into service. Drivers were pulled off break. He asked for people's destinations and told them the buses they needed, gave them walking directions from unfamiliar stops, suggested transfers, made sure one woman got safely onto her bus with all her luggage. (It was my bus, but she was behind me; I couldn't see if she was older, frail, or just handling heavy and awkward bags. She got off before me, though, and the same spirit prevailed on the bus: I heard people calling, making sure someone had got all her stuff, making sure she'd got all her stuff, before the doors closed.) He was loud and stressed and efficient and I didn't have a chance to thank him; he moved off too quickly into the crowd. I shouted it anyway. He was amazing to see in action. I got on an 87 that was packed to tinning capacity—driven by Laura, who waved me on without asking for fare—and I got off in Porter Square, where I bought an herbal chai latte with a shot of pumpkin syrup instantly. Rob met me a few minutes later. We had planned on grocery shopping; instead I just bought some conditioner so that I could take a very hot shower tonight and headed back into Davis for dinner before he left for rehearsal. It was a full hour and a half later than I'd planned. I got home at 6:40. I've been sitting here drinking tea since. I believe that was an adventure.
I've been married for a week.
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P.