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My Way Home
May. 31st, 2007 08:33 pmIt's strange how much people who read this journal know about me, and yet they have no idea what I do on a day to day basis. This is because I have great difficulty explaining it myself without sounding phenomenally boring - the best way I've found to describe my job is that I work at a company that builds online database systems for other companies. After which people tend to sort of drift away and talk to someone else. And as I'm sitting on the train at the moment, I thought that another way to give you some snapshot of my life would be to describe my journey home from it. Well, it seemed a great idea one paragraph ago.
After avoiding the lifts by going down the artificially one-way stairs, the best bit of the journey home is that the entrance to the station is literally about ten steps away from the Vanguard building, where we have an office on the top floor. I'm certain that entering the door of Davis Square triggers the arrival of a red line train, because the tannoy always announces that my train is coming when I step inside. After that, it's a matter of performing an Olympic hundred-metre downhill escalator sprint (if it's working and not in bits at the side of the platform being polished), waving my wallet at the automatic gates and hoping they open. I've got quite good at this, and can now easily make it in time without resorting to jumping off the higher level.
For people in Britain, the train is just what you'd imagine the tube in London (or indeed any subway system) to be like - a set of slightly tatty carriages with plasters covering up the holes in the seats, with announcements read out periodically by someone who sounds like Marvin from the Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Because I don't go home until about seven o'clock, it's common to get a carriage virtually to myself, at least until we pass Harvard University where a variety of odd students get on.
Seven stops along, Park Street is where I change over. This is one of the central Boston stations (unlike Central Station, which isn't central at all) that were built as part of America's first subway, and it contains connections for a number of lines, designated by colour. The green line is the one that takes me home, and it's unusual in that it splits into four sections halfway along its route - the B line for Boston College, C for Cleveland Circle, D for... er... riversiDe, and E for Heath Street. 'Eath Street. Well, I didn't come up with it.
After climbing the stairs from the red line, I manoeuvre myself in front of the second pillar on the right, next to the perpetual puddle on the floor under the leak in the roof because that's where the door of the carriage always stops, and if I get in first I'm more likely to get one of the seats to myself in the corners. At the time I come back in the evenings there's usually a man there who's either playing an ancient Chinese instrument or murdering a cat - I've never gone far enough down the platform to check which it is. The trains are arranged on two lines - B and E on one side, C and D on the other. After about eighteen D trains go past, eventually a C one arrives.
The Green Line has a fleet of trains powered by magic that turn into buses halfway along their route. After about six underground stations the carriage rises to ground level and follows Beacon Street, the main road that stretches from inner Boston all the way out to where we live and presumably continues halfway across the country. Even though it's a perfectly straight line the drivers somehow manage to make it an uncomfortable bumpy ride, and I often feel a little ill by the time it gets to Brandon Hall six more stops away. This is usually because of concentrating on playing something on my laptop (so far I've gone through almost the entirety of the first two Lemmings games, the original GTA, a couple of complete games of Civ, some Sierra adventures and various independent titles - suggestions for further train-entertainment are welcome).
My walk to the flat is slightly longer than the non-existent walk from work to the station, as it means wandering down a sort of lane-driveway on to the corner with the block of flats. Recently there's been a group of workmen there who obviously didn't think my journey home was dangerous enough, so they've turned off the lamp post opposite our street, making it necessary for me to cross the road in pitch darkness if I'm home at all late. Provided I survive that, it's then just a walk up the hill to the front door of the building. And after checking the post, finding a pile of junk mail and going down a floor in the second-scariest lift in the world, that's the end of the journey and also the end of the worst post ever.
After avoiding the lifts by going down the artificially one-way stairs, the best bit of the journey home is that the entrance to the station is literally about ten steps away from the Vanguard building, where we have an office on the top floor. I'm certain that entering the door of Davis Square triggers the arrival of a red line train, because the tannoy always announces that my train is coming when I step inside. After that, it's a matter of performing an Olympic hundred-metre downhill escalator sprint (if it's working and not in bits at the side of the platform being polished), waving my wallet at the automatic gates and hoping they open. I've got quite good at this, and can now easily make it in time without resorting to jumping off the higher level.
For people in Britain, the train is just what you'd imagine the tube in London (or indeed any subway system) to be like - a set of slightly tatty carriages with plasters covering up the holes in the seats, with announcements read out periodically by someone who sounds like Marvin from the Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Because I don't go home until about seven o'clock, it's common to get a carriage virtually to myself, at least until we pass Harvard University where a variety of odd students get on.
Seven stops along, Park Street is where I change over. This is one of the central Boston stations (unlike Central Station, which isn't central at all) that were built as part of America's first subway, and it contains connections for a number of lines, designated by colour. The green line is the one that takes me home, and it's unusual in that it splits into four sections halfway along its route - the B line for Boston College, C for Cleveland Circle, D for... er... riversiDe, and E for Heath Street. 'Eath Street. Well, I didn't come up with it.
After climbing the stairs from the red line, I manoeuvre myself in front of the second pillar on the right, next to the perpetual puddle on the floor under the leak in the roof because that's where the door of the carriage always stops, and if I get in first I'm more likely to get one of the seats to myself in the corners. At the time I come back in the evenings there's usually a man there who's either playing an ancient Chinese instrument or murdering a cat - I've never gone far enough down the platform to check which it is. The trains are arranged on two lines - B and E on one side, C and D on the other. After about eighteen D trains go past, eventually a C one arrives.
The Green Line has a fleet of trains powered by magic that turn into buses halfway along their route. After about six underground stations the carriage rises to ground level and follows Beacon Street, the main road that stretches from inner Boston all the way out to where we live and presumably continues halfway across the country. Even though it's a perfectly straight line the drivers somehow manage to make it an uncomfortable bumpy ride, and I often feel a little ill by the time it gets to Brandon Hall six more stops away. This is usually because of concentrating on playing something on my laptop (so far I've gone through almost the entirety of the first two Lemmings games, the original GTA, a couple of complete games of Civ, some Sierra adventures and various independent titles - suggestions for further train-entertainment are welcome).
My walk to the flat is slightly longer than the non-existent walk from work to the station, as it means wandering down a sort of lane-driveway on to the corner with the block of flats. Recently there's been a group of workmen there who obviously didn't think my journey home was dangerous enough, so they've turned off the lamp post opposite our street, making it necessary for me to cross the road in pitch darkness if I'm home at all late. Provided I survive that, it's then just a walk up the hill to the front door of the building. And after checking the post, finding a pile of junk mail and going down a floor in the second-scariest lift in the world, that's the end of the journey and also the end of the worst post ever.
