Detours

While most normal people were at home sleeping in on Monday, I was up at 6am. Unfortunately, I don't get holidays like President's Day or MLK Day off. Even worse, transit systems run on holiday schedules. I used to plan ahead and at least look at train times, but after finding little payoff, I've grown accustomed to expensing cab rides whenever my shuttles are not running.

Leaving the office is always the most difficult on a non-holiday, as cabs don't run rampant in Tarrytown like they do in Manhattan. Luckily, somebody was recently hired to my office that drives from the city. She offered a few of us city dwellers a ride. With little traffic due to the holiday, we were bound to make into the city in no time.

The trip was short but the car was packed. Each of us had brought 2 bags in case Tuesday's snow would keep us home. After the first two drop-offs uptown, I shifted up to the front seat. I wanted to make small talk with the driver, but as she was asking me about cafés downtown, she managed to run a red light and turn us northbound on the FDR. So much for getting home early...

Apologizing repeatedly, she quickly activated the GPS to get us turned around. At that point there wasn't the option to get off the FDR and make a quick turn around, so we were instructed to go over a bridge and into Queens. We couldn't help but laugh at what happened, and it definitely broke the ice to more conversation. She tried to trick the GPS by pulling one or two u-turns, but ended up turning back around both times. The GPS was not changing its mind about the midtown tunnel, so we gave in.

We did see some great views of the city, and had a lot of laughs. I think I've mentioned before that a big part of etummocing is flexability. If we had gotten mad at the situation, it probably would have been worse than getting caught behind a 20 car pile-up on the original route. It actually turned out to be the highlight of my day, after 8 hours of being bitter for having to go into work.

Approaching my drop off spot, she did ask me not to tell our colleagues what happened. I could understand that she's new and felt embarrassed, so I agreed. She didn't say anything about blog posts though!