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On Sunday, we went to visit my friends Bryan and Elissa, who live in Brooklyn. We boarded the F train, which stops less than a block from Bryan's abode. In New York, the trains run 24/7. Track repair and maintenance must go on while trains are running. Generally, track maintenance is done on Sunday, and Sunday riders can expect a few hiccups. For instance, for a few stops, our train went on the A line track instead of the F line track--the F line tracks in our direction were undergoing something. Since we had skipped some F stops, passengers had to get off the train and take another F train back--since F trains going the other way were still able to use their regular track, stop at their regular stations. The conductor explained all of this over the intercom as we approached the affected stops. The conductor explained it multiple times, sounding a bit more exasperated each time. "For the 15th time today!" he yelped, before explaining it again. How confused could people be? As it happens, we weren't going to one of the skipped stops, but apparently we could understand what was going on better than some of the natives.
Soon we were back on the F tracks, the people whose stops had been skipped offboarded, and the train continued. We shot through a station without stopping. The conductor explained over the intercom--a train had stalled in the station, we had been forced to take some kind of evasive action to keep from running into it. The reason that he hadn't announced that we were skipping that station is that it hadn't been planned. People who had wanted that station should get off at the next station and ride back. He didn't need to explain this multiple times, perhaps because there hadn't been any warning, because no-one had a chance to reflect upon this announcement and get confused. Again, this was easy enough to understand. I was impressed with the system. It was adaptable. Drivers and conductors could react to problems, work around them, explain their solutions.
Soon we arrived at the next station, people offboarded. The train continued. Our station was coming up soon. It seemed like the train was rattling along the tunnel for a very long time. When it emerged, it was in a station beyond what we wanted, it had skipped our station--we hadn't even seen the station. No explanation came over the intercom. We got off the train, caught another one going back. It stopped at our station.
When we reached Bryan and Elissa's place, we described our experience. Bryan got an excited expression. He'd seen an extra tunnel on his subway maps, hadn't been able to figure out what train used it; many stations on the F line had two sets of tracks in each direction, normal for lines that have both express and normal trains running; Bryan's station had no second set of tracks. Obviously, our train had ended up on the "express" tracks, perhaps in dodging around the stalled train. We'd travelled down that mysterious extra tunnel, bypassing some stations. I was glad he was so excited. All I could think was that Tokyo's trains had been easier to figure out.
We went to the New York Transit Museum, also in Brooklyn. We spent some time looking at displays about the subway system's construction, historic subway maps, signage, turnstiles. But the best part of the museum was the down on the tracks--there rested a number of old subway cars from different eras, some of which were open for exploration. We didn't look at many. We found one that looked comfortable, entered, and sat down to talk. We were the only ones in the car; the museum wasn't very crowded.
We had been chatting for a while before the two gentlemen walked in. One of them seemed a bit embarassed. Perhaps he was embarassed for his friend, a florid-faced fellow dressed in shorts and a t-shirt from which his tummy over- and under-flowed, respectively.
The car we were on--it was just like the cars back when he was a boy. They had wicker seats, just like those we were sitting on--and no-one ever slashed them. Kids loved the trains. They would ride all day. And this wasn't that long ago--the guy said he was only 35. We smiled, nodded. He told us of the joy to be had in riding the train to Far Rockaway, skimming along just above the surface of the water. We made appreciative noises. All of us talked together about the attractions of Coney Island, the impossibility of driving in New York. And yet this guy's conversation was at skew lines to everyone else's.--it might approach the region, but it was going in a different direction, and never touched. After a while, I was wondering if this guy was ever going to go away.
It was then that a small boy closed the door at one end of the car. He was unable to open it, much to the chagrin of his mother who was worried that he had broken something. I got up and tried to open the door. Nothing doing--it was stuck. Someone pointed out that the other door was still open. "Hey, we'd better get out of here before that gets stuck, too." Laughing, everyone jogged out of the car. The florid-faced guy and his friend kept jogging. I got the impression that they were glad to get away from us. It was like the guy couldn't think of a graceful way to duck out of the conversation. Did he not know how?
I got the impression that the guy got into lots of conversations with strangers. I couldn't bring myself to believe that he didn't know how to get out of them.