The Two-Hour Commute

Today's commute edged on the absurd.

The train arrived at Savage Station on time and took us toward our destination in a nice, fast manner. Seemed promising. And then, nearing Union Station, beside New York Station, the train stopped, for about half-an-hour. I was actually asleep, no small feat in those frigid cars.

Then we hear the conductor through the speakers mumbling something about the tracks. After five more minutes, we were told that we were moving, but not toward DC, but back to Greenbelt, where we would be let out and able to take metro. Somebody in the back of the car let a hysterical laugh, to which we responded by laughing, too. So, there we go, undoing the route, moving to Greenbelt when, suddenly, the locomotive stops again. Unbelievably, we hear the conductor again, telling us that they finally got permission to yet again change directions, and travel back to DC, after all. The news was met with nothing but nervous jeers, laughs. I laughed so much, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. I have seen a lot in my four years of MARC torture, but today it was so absurd, so pathetic that it was actually funny. I must confess, though, that for a second I wondered if perhaps the locomotive driver was... um... drunk?

So, anyway, when I finally got to the office and checked the news online, I saw this story at the Washington Post site... Apparently, a body had been found on the tracks near Union Station. A few messages were waiting in my inbox, from the MARC e-mail system, these did not mention the body, but a police investigation going on. Strangely, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when we got to Union Station at 9:30 a.m, about an hour and a half late.