Busses, Trains, and more trains

Well, this past weekend I ventured up the east coast again to visit the boy and had an even more interesting (generous word choice) time than last. Lets just get right down into it:

I decided to take the bus again (megabus this time instead of boltbus) and arrived (barely) in time for my 12:15pm bus to NYC on Friday. At about 12:30, people start to wonder why we haven't left DC yet, and by 12:45, people start to get cranky. We can hear random mumblings from the bus driver about "the gas" and after the bus had been started and restarted around 5 times, we begin to think that maybe there is a problem. People start to ask the bus driver what is going on and after about 10 people pester the poor driver, they manage to put the story together that something is wrong with the accelerator and the bus won't move. The guy sitting next to me on the bus proceeds to call the company to ask if they can send another bus or see what they can do for us. The response is that they are not sending another bus, and the next 4 buses (approximately 1 per hour) are booked solid, which by the way we all had a hard time believing because our bus was barely half full, but whatever. So by now its around 1:00/1:15, about an hour after the bus was supposed to leave and we have moved negative 2 feet. At this point, people start to bail and I call home to enlist the internet searching skills of mi madre to see if there are any trains leaving soon and how much they cost. Dad was the only one home, so he heard my whole saga up to that point and after some coaching, managed to find the train schedules for me from DC's union station to NYC's penn station. He tells me there is a train leaving for nyc at 2:05, so I decide to bite the bullet and shell out some dough to take the train. Hey, at least it will get me there faster right?

Not so fast George Banks...I get to union station to buy the train ticket ($144 one-way compared to my $17 bus ticket) and the woman says "the train is 45 minutes delayed." Of course it is, whatever...at this point, I just want any mode of transportation that will eventually get me to NYC. So, the train leaves DC at about 3:00 (almost an hour late and almost three hours after I was supposed to leave DC). We get to somewhere in Delaware and start going pretty slow, after a few minutes the conductor comes on the speaker and says "you may have noticed we are not traveling at our maximum speed (I would hope so since we were only traveling at a moderate jogging pace). Someone installed our engine upside down, and theres only one tool in our galaxy that can fix it...and its in Madagascar." Thats what I heard in my head at least. I think what he actually said was: "We are having signal problems in the area, which means we can not coordinate as easily with the other trains in the area." Translation: We have no idea if another train is coming at us on the same track, so we have to go 5 mph so that when we crash, only the people in the first few cars die. And unfortunately, this signal problem stretches all the way to philidelphia, so you passengers are just going to have to die a long agonizing death while we inch along to philly and watch the turtles, snails, and worms pass us.

We FINALLY get to philly and start going fast again, and then I finally get to my stop, Newark airport at 7:50pm; 3 hours after the train was supposed to get there, and 3 hours after my bus was supposed to get to NYC Penn station. I finally made it to Matt's place at 9:00pm, 10 hours after I left my apartment to catch the stupid megabus. At least I don't have to take the megabus again...O wait, I do because I booked two weekends at the same time, so I'll be updating on how trip number 2 goes the weekend of August 22nd

Stay tuned...