Girls in white, men in black

[sovay]

derspatchel and I are on our way to New York, to see Norman Bel Geddes at the Museum of the City of New York before the exhibit leaves. This in despite of his crutches and my braces, which I have just successfully replaced without losing them down a terrifying Amtrak Regional toilet (partly because I was careful not to take them into the terrifying Amtrak Regional bathroom in the first place). The sun is doing that mid-to-late winter thing where the snow looks creamy, faintly gilded under a hazy, light-streaked sky. Bleach bypass. The cirrus looks like the northern lights in monochrome. Besides the sky, the only real colors running alongside the train are the crumpled brown of deciduous leaves and the rusting on the pylons of the power lines. Houses here and there, oddly pastel; all slope-roofed with snow. The rivers are dark or opaque with reflection. I'm looking forward to the salt marshes and the sea. [edit] A little more color came into everything, but still: white masts, white snow, blue sky, blue water, all overcast sepia-gold; a hand-tinted postcard.

Less pleasantly, my Charlie Card expired. I hadn't even known that was a danger. I received no warning the last time I used it, or the last time I put money on it. We came down the escalator at Davis this morning, the next train to Ashmont was a minute away, I moved to go through the turnstile and it honked at me. Card expired. I took the card out in case it couldn't read it properly. Still expired. I tried to put money on it. Still expired. At this point we were going to miss the Red Line no matter what; I turned rather frantically to the MBTA employee at the kiosk who pointed me wordlessly to a handwritten sign telling me to go to Downtown Crossing. Which I couldn't do with an expired card, never mind that we didn't have the time with our train leaving South Station in less than an hour. I paid five dollars for a printed ticket so that we could make our train; I'll have to go out by myself on Saturday and see if I can fix the problem then. The Globe tells me I should have known about the expiration in advance, but it's not very helpful to learn that I could have checked the expiration date at any fare machine when I didn't even know the cards were designed to expire. Un-fun.

No matter. We're on our way. It's our first trip as a married couple, I realize. Honeymoon stage one, commencing now.

Comments

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Less pleasantly, my Charlie Card expired.

Suck! And that presumably means mine's expired as well! wtf, MBTA?
...Oh right. In calling it a Charlie Card, they were basically admitting in advance that they were going to pull something like this.

Your trip, by contrast, sounds lovely. It is indeed that sort of day.

[sovay]

...Oh right. In calling it a Charlie Card, they were basically admitting in advance that they were going to pull something like this.

AND DID THEY EVER RETURN YES THEY DID AND THEY WERE NOT HAPPY.

Your trip, by contrast, sounds lovely. It is indeed that sort of day.

It was a good trip down. I wrote a poem. I watched the sea. I didn't read any books, but that's what tonight is for.