Standing (okay, sitting) firm
Today was a repeat of last Friday in one respect. After arriving on the shuttle from Medford, and seeing that the 6:56 to Flatbush Avenue was using M-7’s, I decided to take the 7:04 to Penn rather than waiting for my usual 7:19. It worked out well for me last week and I was hoping for a repeat. It didn’t turn out as well today, but could have been far, far worse than it actually was. The car wasn’t particularly crowded at first, quite likely because there was a group of six young people – three boys and three girls, but not (as far as I could tell) couples – traveling together and being a bit loud and raucous. From what I gathered, they had just graduated from high school. As I’ve noted before, noisy youthful exuberance doesn’t bother me, but drives many SCA’s crazy. Eventually they quieted down and the car gradually became more crowded. Disaster nearly struck when a large SCA plopped down in the aisle seat next to me. He wasn’t quite large enough to make the ride a horror show, but it certainly would have been unpleasant. As soon as he sat down he tried to wriggle around and push me to the side to make more room for himself. I knew that if I did move it would just make a bad situation even worse, and used every bit of strength I had to resist his attempts at pushing me aside. It is with great pleasure and satisfaction that I report that he gave up trying after a few seconds and actually got up to sit elsewhere. Victory! A non-SCA man took his place moments later, which was fine by me because he must’ve weighed a good 50 pounds less than the first one. I had an easy ride into Penn, and waited only a couple of minutes for a 3 train to Fulton. While I had a seat the whole way, we were stopped for several minutes outside Chambers Street due to “train traffic ahead of us.”
No seats on the 3 train I took from Fulton to Penn after work, but no delays either. A fair tradeoff, if you ask me. I got the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma, which was using an M-3 consist today. It made for an easy ride, with an average-sized woman in her 40’s taking the aisle seat next to me. I sent most of the ride reading, and we got to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle without delay.
Gym: I arrived quite late, just before 10 in fact, and was very pleased that the air conditioning was actually working. I ran two miles on the treadmill at 5.9 mph, making 6.5 miles for the week so far. I then did the Hammer Strength MTS rows that I wasn’t able to do yesterday, and did very well at them: 8 x 115/115, 6 x 120/120, 8 x 110/110, 8 x 105/105, 8 x 100/100.
