Tuesday, December 21, 2004, 8:15am
Tuesday, December 21, 2004, 8:15am
On the coldest morning since the winter of 2002-2003, the 8:07 is crawling through eastern Ashland past what must be a frozen reservoir, though my window is too frost covered and dingy to say much by way of direct observation. Back home our deck thermometer read a few degrees above zero Fahrenheit, but it always reads high. More likely it was really a degree below.
From a wall hook at my side hangs some of my old “Mount Washington” gear – the reason I bought it, though hardly the last time I’ve need it. The current kit includes a back-packable goose down coat and GoreTex windbreaker, a thick wool hat along with a more pedestrian scarf and well-lined leather workman’s gloves tossed into the overhead rack. Underneath my blue jeans I’m also wearing workman’s long johns and for a shirt its a New England style flannel button-down. I suppose I could use a decent set of ski goggles, and if it gets much colder a NASA-style space suit.
Crawling out of Framingham Station, Mark issues today’s train-delay apology and announces that our train will be making every stop into Boston – adding the Newton stops, and perhaps 10 minutes to our trip overall. Even though crawling, making every local stop on a cold morning at least gets people out of the freezing cold.
By West Natick the sun has risen noticeable higher. By now another half hour of sunlight has likely pushed the outdoor temperatures a degree or two higher. If previous experience is any guide, in Boston it may be ten degrees warmer atop the Summer Street 1899 Bridge. If I am lucky it won’t be windy there – which is rarely the case – and if I am particularly lucky it won’t be windy at all, and I’ll make it across without another one of those Fort Point Channel crossings I’d rather forget.
Picking up speed at Lake Cochituate I feel growing hope for an arrival at South Station sometime before noon. Nearby Mark has just finished explaining to a passenger how a switch failure in Framingham gummed up the works this morning. Controllers have fewer options for routing traffic in that case. Over the intercom someone sounding not quite like Frank has repeated what Mark just said – though with fewer details.
With seats already scarce, at Wellesley Square a large crowd climbs aboard. Crammed in as much as I going to be crammed, I have a window seat, north lighting, and a warm laptop PC for company – what more could I ask?
With the outside world rumbling along, in South Boston I envision a future cup of coffee waiting for me at the corner of Congress and Farnsworth Streets where I sometimes stop on cold winter mornings to celebrate another successful commuting trek. Beyond this I contemplate my fourth-story office desk standing near a 100-year-old steam pipe that starts up in mid-October and doesn’t shut down until late-April.
From my window this afternoon I will see the sun tracking to the west filling a quarter-acre courtyard fifty feet below. From this vantage point I will also notice the backside of the Children’s Museum progressing through it various phases of daylight – an old warehouse building with foot-thick oaken beams and foot-thick red brick walls unpainted inside and out – much like my own office building and many others nearby.
Except for that damn 1899 Summer Street Bridge, I should be okay today.
At Wellesley Farms Station another large crowd shuffles aboard. Very likely we’re collecting passengers in place of a train that never arrived. This and similar examples show the biggest problem with any railroad. Just when the equipment needs most to be reliable – in cold or heavy snow or rain – this is exactly when equipment is most prone to failure. For this reason alone, even though it might seem like overkill for me to dress in arctic gear for a simple 15 minute morning sidewalk trek, on the worst mornings I’m most likely to be standing around outdoors for an hour or more and I have to dress accordingly.
At Auburndale Station people are coming aboard sounding grateful for any sort of warmth – even once cramming aboard an already crowded train. After waiting 45 minutes on a morning like this in the shade of the flimsy plywood awning dividing the rails from the Pike, I can see their point.
Leaving West Newton our train has a subway-feel with passengers standing in the aisles reading tightly folded newsprint. Since leaving Natick, Mark and William haven’t collected tickets. This is fairly typical once trains show up late by more than a half hour or jam would-be passengers into aisles of a train otherwise running close to on-time.
People running late or standing half frozen, sopping wet, or half-cooked (depending on the season) aren’t a happy lot and I suppose the MBTA decided a long time ago that grubbing for fare money under such circumstances isn’t worth the pennies collected on the dollar considering the ill-will generated.
Sometimes there’s simply no way for the conductors to get through the aisles anyway.
Approaching Yawkey Station, it’s only 9:10 am, so we’ll be arriving at South Station perhaps only 20 minutes later than the usual five minutes late. In the bright sunlight of the day I can sense the Pike – white with road salt or frost or both, but knowing the priorities of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, road salt is more likely the explanation.
Beyond BU we slow to a stop at Yawkey Station. I’m on the wrong side of the train to see much, but it seems a few are leaving among those who boarded at the Newton stops. It’s a bit of a cattle run for these people, with those disembarking pushing through passengers standing in the aisles in no hurry to move. As soon I become fully aware of the struggle it ends. The Yawkey passengers are gone. The station drifts away.
As ungrateful as it may sound considering those standing in the aisles, my butt hurts. Unlike the much better seats aboard long-haul Acela trains the MBTA seats are the one-hour variety. On my trips to Washington, at Penn Station in New York four hours out of Boston my butt is beginning to hurt there, too, and by Philadelphia it’s getting a little numb. Yet if the Acela trains had the MBTA one-hour seats – by Washington I’d probably need a wheelchair.
At Back Bay our train vomits half its misery, leaving the cabin mostly cold and quiet. Heading indoors for the front of the train a few passengers straggle along the aisle for a head-start on the mad dash to the warmth of South Station’s inner concourse. For me the South Station platforms are of no concern. My head-start instead involves gearing up for the 1899 Bridge by donning every piece of clothing I have with me.
