January 27, 2004
A Taste of Poison Paradise
I had a little adventure this morning. I was on BART, last car, no one else in the car, headphones on, music loud, singing loud, and the train stopped, as usual, at Lafayette. No big deal. We don't do express trains on BART, or so I thought. The train starts moving again, and it crosses over into the middle track...the breakdown lane for BART trains. I'm all, huh? A BART operator got on the train at Lafayette and went into the operator's cabin. I thought nothing of it because they often do this to get from one place to another, and why would they want to sit with the hoi polloi when they can have their own private space, complete with windows that open?
So the train just sits there for about ten minutes. And I started to panic. I was gone from work yesterday (eating yummy cashew chicken for lunch, but don't tell anyone), and I didn't want to be late for work today. But then again, who cares, I'm a temp, blah blah blah. And just when I'm resigned to being a little late for work, the train starts moving again, except in the direction whence I came...headed back to San Francisco. Hmmm.
And it didn't stop at Lafayette, or Orinda, or Rockridge. It occurred to me to peer out the window at the marquees on the platforms I was passing. At MacArthur station, I saw that my Concord train had become a Train Won't Stop train. These are trains that fly through the stations with no passengers (or, now that I think about it, perhaps they do have passengers, trapped, and panicky) going from one end of the line to another. The marquee reads "Train Won't Stop" in big red letters as it flies through.
On and on we sped through the line, passing through all of San Francisco's stops, through Colma, and ending in Millbrae, the other end of the line. The conductor got out of his cabin, noticed me sitting there, and asked me what I was doing. I told him that "I didn't hear that the train went out of service at Lafayette, I had my headphones on and all, and there wasn't an opportunity to get off the train after that. And...by the way...you didn't mention the fact that the train had gone out of service at Lafayette when you got on the train, cruised me, and then went into your little cabin. But thanks for the express ride. It was cool." He just kinda shrugged and walked off the train.
Two and a half hours later, I walked in to work. While I was zooming through the Bay Area, I called my supervisor here to let her know what happened, and she seemed reluctant to believe me. I admit, it doesn't happen every day.
