There’s always an adventure waiting for me in New York City in some shape or form. How it will decide to manifest itself I can never be sure of until I’m right in the thick of it, but rarely have I come back without some kind of tale to tell.

My adventures last night were no exception to the rule. It all started when I stepped out of the office yesterday afternoon after putting in my eight hours of work. I found out that when you boiled down all the office speak and mumbo jumbo, the whole reason I had to travel all the way up to the city for about a dozen or so pieces of paper relating to a project I’m currently working on. Mental note: get a fax machine or something! Still, it was good to see my coworkers again, at least those that were in the office. Telecommuting certainly cuts out the human aspect of things to a large degree.

I decided to stroll around SoHo for a while, a pastime I indulged in many lunch breaks and evenings where I didn’t want to fight through the human cattle drive known as the daily commute. Mostly just window shopping and such to help kill time between work and the departure of the Rocks Off cruise I had bought a ticket to the night before.

Once I did start my trip uptown, things went as smooth as silk. From boarding the R train uptown on through the walk over to the Hudson River from the 23rd Street station. I was going to make it with plenty of time to spare, so I was taking my time and keeping a leisurely pace. I arrived at Chelsea Piers and started looking for the line of long-haired hippy freaks that I expected to see for this show, except I wasn’t seeing them. I took a quick seat inside a cafe and pulled out my laptop to check the departure address: 23rd and FDR Drive. That’s here right? So where is…oh wait. That’s right. FDR is on the east side of Manhattan, and I’m on the west side. Oops!

I quickly hailed down on of the nearby cabs to make the cross town trip. I sat in the back seat, quietly eating a $4 grilled cheese sandwich I had purchased while trying to get my bearings straight. I had to put something in my stomach to stop the hunger pains and I didn’t have much time to shop for a cheaper alternative. All the while I was feeling a little bit foolish. I mean, I profess to know Manhattan fairly well, so this was quite a blow to my ego. Oh well, all it really cost me was cab fare and ten minutes of my time. The plus side of this is that I’ll never make that mistake again.

I paid my six bits to the cabby and headed down to the dock, finally seeing the line of people I had been expecting. As the ship came into view, I started to get the impression that it wasn’t nearly large enough to hold a concert. But as I boarded and had a chance to look around, I slowly started to change my opinion. The floating tub called the “Half Moon” seemed rather seaworthy. It had two decks, with a bar, bathrooms and some dining tables set up on the lower one. The upper deck had an uncovered bow (which was already jam packed) and the rest was covered by a canopy with open sides.

We pulled away from the dock a little after 9 o’clock, ready for our three hour trip out to the Statue of Liberty and back. The Slip took the “stage” (a section of the dance floor on the starboard side of the ship) shortly thereafter.

Now I was going into this show completely blind in a musical sense of speaking. I had heard a lot of things about the band, but never any of there music. Still, the word of mouth was quite strong and proved to be well earned. They played a mix of styles all night with their quality jams, mixing everything from blues to jazz improvisation to rock and then some. Probably the most memorable jam I can remember is when they broke into some kind of human beat box routine, sampled it and looped it, and then started playing their instruments on top of it. They even managed to get a kazoo into the mix. Yes, a friggin’ kazoo! And it was all tight as hell.

Honestly thought, they had me as soon as they broke into their second song of the night when they busted out a cover of Steely Dan’s “Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me)”, what with me being a big time Dan fan and all. About the only thing that could have made that moment even better is if they had waited another song or two into the set to pull it out so we would be going under the Brooklyn Bridge as they played it (which is what always pops into my mind when I hear the song for some strange reason). Still, they did remarkable justice to the tune. They also pulled out an instrumental cover of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Rolling on the River”, leaving it up to individual members of the crowd to decide if they wanted to sing the chorus or not.

I split my time between the band and the skyline of the city, which was equally as impressive. Also in the course of events we circumnavigated Governor’s Island, which I had only seen from the tops of the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building before. Eventually we moved out further into the harbor to go say high to Lady Liberty, getting close enough for my camera’s flash to kiss her sandals. Well I may be exaggerating a bit on that point, be we got close. I tried to snap a decent picture, but with the motion of the boat and the zoom lens it was quite a challenge to get anything halfway decent. I must have taken about eight shots before I got one I was happy with. Hooray for digital photography!

As midnight drew near we started to pull up twoard the dock. When I had planned this trip, I knew I would be cutting it kind of close getting from the dock to penn station, but with a half hour between docking and train departure, I figured it was well within the realm of possibility. Here’s where the adventure part of this story really starts to kick in.

The captain started to have some issues when it came to docking. Now I understand parallel parking a ship with over a hundred people on it is no simple task, but you shouldn’t have to do the nautical equivalent of donuts to line it up with it’s berth either. Even some of the crew were openly questioning what the hell was going on. My mind instantly started running through worst case scenarios; a total reflex reaction.

The docking stunt had cost me about 10 minutes or so, but I was the fourth person off of the boat, so I had a good chance of getting to the street and flagging down a cab before the rest of the masses. If I could get one right off the bat, I could still make it to Penn Station in time for the train home. On top of that, there was still one more train I could possibly catch before they shut down service on the North Jersey Coast Line for the night. As cab after cab flew on by, already full up on fares to fleece, walking to Penn Station seemed to be a better and better idea.

I managed to catch up with a girl who was also at the show, and who was the first one to disembark. My powers of observation had told me back on the ship that she was in the same predicament that I was; riffling through a train schedule, impatiently looking at her watch. If she could have swam to shore to catch her train on time she might very well have done that. Unfortunately for her she had already missed her last train, and was now on her way to the Port Authority bus terminal to try and get herself back home. As she finally managed to hail a cab, a wished her well and continued on with my own transit dilemma.

My saving grace was the time I had before that last train departed — over an hour. I decided that I already spent more on this whole experience than I wanted to, so saving the cab fare more than made up for hike I’d be making from 23rd and FDR Drive to 32nd and 7th. It only took about a half hour to get to the station. Now I had nothing but time to kill, and plenty of seats in which to kill it, not to mention rest my weary body in. That’s when I glanced up at the departure schedule screen.

Seems that in the past few months I forgot one key thing about the NJ Transit schedule: the last train on the North Jersey Coast Line didn’t run all the way south to Bay Head, like I needed it to. It instead terminates in Long Branch, a solid forty five minutes or so north.

This whole experience was getting better and better by the minute!

I called my sister up at home and asked her if she could give me a lift home when I got to the station. My original plan had been to ride my bicycle home from Point Pleasant Beach station, but seeing as I wasn’t going to be able to get to the station without paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 to $40 for a cab ride down there this was no longer a feasible option. Thankfully she agreed without too much fuss, thought I was ready with a backup plan if she started to give me any static. It consisted mostly of guilting her with the fact that I had helped her out of a similar situation a while back. Anyway, now with that worry in check, I sat back against a pillar in the 7th Avenue Concourse and waited for the track announcement.

Once the track was finally posted, I rushed to get myself a decent seat. The last train from Manhattan is usually just as packed as one of the rush hour trains, sans people standing in the isles. Once I got my situated, I opened up my iBook, threw on my headphones and drowned out the crowd noise with some Maktub, trying to relax. This adventure would be over soon enough.

But is anything ever that easy? Nope! Not for me! The rail car lurched forward and then stopped after about ten feet or so. I didn’t pay too much attention to this at first. I’ve had similar experiences commuting in the past where they had to slightly reposition the train to allow more passengers to load, so I just stuck my head back into my laptop. About fifteen minutes later is when the announcement came over the PA system that the “motor is shot” and they had called for “new equipment”.

It’s official. We’ve moved from bad to worse. Outstanding!!!

Now for those of you who don’t know, when NJ Transit workers talk about “new equipment”, they mean a whole new train, which also means having to pack everything back up, disembark, walk over to a different track and fight to get a good seat all over again. I don’t think I have to tell you that I was a little upset at this prospect. That anger manifested itself as delirious laughter which seemed somewhat out of place amongst the grumbling and cursing from the other passengers.

So nearly an hour and a half after the scheduled departure time we finally left Penn Station. They had been nice enough to find new equipment with plenty of rail cars, so my worries about finding decent sitting space were unfounded. I had a whole three seater to myself and I made the most of it, laying down to try and catch a few moments of much needed rest. It was close to 3 a.m. and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing my bed until around 5 at the earliest. The only bet now was if I’d see the sun rise before I saw my mattress.

I hopped off the train in Red Bank, which by the grace of geography happens to be a mere half hour from Brick by way of the Garden State Parkway. I know this because I made the trip day after day. I’ve timed it. Now all that was left was to make bets with myself on how long it would take for my sister to show up. My original guess was ten minutes.

So I more or less had the entire ground around the train station to myself, and nothing but time to kill. What to do, what to do? Well, I know there’s no more trains coming for a few hours, so why not go tightrope walking down the rails? Or even better, since there are almost no cars to be seen, let’s go stand in the middle of the crossing. Hey, I’ve never really had a chance to take a real close up look at one of those signal gate thingamagiggers before. No time like the present.

I think you get the point. I was near delirium at this moment. Given another half hour I might have started counting the petals of flowers in a nearby pot to kill time. Thankfully after only 20 minutes of waiting I spotted my sister’s car approaching the station.

Unfortunately, she didn’t spot me. She had driven right past me and pulled into one of the parking lots and slowed down. I started to walk after her, but she seemed intent to keep at least 50 feet of distance between us. This was the last indignity and I started to throw what might be considered a tantrum, flailing my arms about and shouting in an attempt to get her attention. She had now turned her car back onto the street and hadd yet to see me. I ran and stood right in the middle of her path. She would either stop or I would be hit: either way I’d have a bed to sleep in soon enough.

Thankfully she stopped and I hopped into the back seat of her car, molding my weary body to its contours. A half hour later and the adventure was over. I was finally home and in my bed. Sleep wasn’t long in coming.

So let’s recap the experience, with bullet points and everything:

• My whole reason for going to the city could have been avoid if I had used a fax machine
• FDR Drive is on the east side of Manhattan, not the west.
• The Slip are a rightously good band.
• Cabs are always full when you need one the most.
• The last train on the North Jersey Coast Line doesn’t go any further than Long Branch, so plan accordingly.
• “New equipment” in NJ Transit speak means “whole new train”.
• My sister should really be wearing her glasses to drive at night.

I hope you’ve all learned something from this. I know I sure have: I’ll never pay four bucks for a grilled cheese sandwich again, no matter how hungry I am!

Tags: Personal

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2003 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.