All the things you want in one day

On a recent trip to NYC, my friend and I had grand plans to wander, to enjoy a few rooftop bars, to see a show, and to generally enjoy all that the city has to offer. Man, did we do this in spades. It was a great weekend, with perfect weather. I spent most of the time marveling at the ability, while in New York, to go anywhere, to do anything, at any time, unlike in my car-centric New England home environment.

My friend’s one request was that we plan dinner on Saturday to allow for enough time to not have to run for the show. She has some vision problems, and trying to run without being able to see where she puts her feet results in inevitably face plants on the ground or perhaps into poles, trash cans, bollards, or other obstacles. Not fun. I was happy to oblige because I don’t really like the stress of making a run for it anyway, regardless of visibility.

We had dinner at 5pm in a terrific Korean restaurant right around the corner from the theater. We took our time. We enjoyed the tasting menu for two. We tried a new type of liquor (soju, a Korean distilled spirit made from sweet potatoes), we enjoyed pork belly two ways, we had black sesame ice cream for dessert. We both ate so much we could barely touch the final beverage pairing let alone finish it.

The meal took about two hours, which was perfect, because that gave us a full hour to walk to the theater, where we got there so early we actually stood in line to wait to get in. This never happens for my friend, who, for the last few shows she has seen, inevitably never stands in line because of the aforementioned rushing as they run down the street.

We get into the theater and see people drinking wine out of souvenir sippy cups. Let me say that again: the theater had wine in sippy cups. Genius. I would have bought one were I not still uncomfortably stuffed from dinner. I bought a souvenir magnet (I collect those). The show was terrific, and I even made it to the restroom and back during intermission despite one of the longest bathroom lines I have ever seen (the line started two floors up and snaked down to the basement level). 

Pretty much everything went right that was supposed to go right. The next day, we took the subway to Brooklyn, ate pizza at a well-known pizza shop without having to wait in line. We walked back to Manhattan by walking over the Brooklyn Bridge (crowded yet totally fun). We found our second rooftop bar of the weekend. The weather was perfect. We found great pour over coffee and little French pastries at a shop near the water. Have I mentioned that the weekend was perfect?

That is, until I got to Penn Station. I had a train booked back to Boston with fifteen minutes to get from the train station to the bus depot next door. If I made the 10 o’clock bus, I would get home at about 11pm, as planned. If I missed it, there was one more bus, at 11pm, but I really didn’t want to sit around Boston’s South Street bus station at 10 o’clock at night, nor did I want to get home so late. But, at least I had a backup plan and I wouldn’t need it anyway because the trains run on time, right? 

Except when they don’t. First my train posted at 3 minutes late. Then ten. Then the dreaded fifteen, and there went my window to make my connection. Then, throughout my ride home, the window would change and go back to five minutes late, then ten minutes late, then … and so forth. 

I was ready at the door of the train with my bag when the doors opened in Boston. I bolted off that train and ran from the platform to the stairwell to the building next door, up one escalator, then up another, then I found the terminal and there was my bus! I saw it! I had made it!

Except, I hadn’t made it. That was a different bus from the same company. My bus had departed on time and I had missed it by about three minutes.

Deep breaths. I confirmed with the station agent that there was, in fact, an 11pm bus scheduled for that bay. I then went to buy a bottle of water at the McDonald’s open in the station (where the woman rang me up, went to get the water, put the bottle of water down at the end of the counter, and then came back to me to give my receipt. Um. Lady. You had the bottle of water in your hand. You couldn’t just hand it to me? I get that there is a process for people ordering food to pick up their food at the end of the counter, but the bottle of water was right…never mind.)

Luckily, hanging out in the train station wasn’t as creepy as I had anticipated. There were plenty of other people around also trying to get from here to there. The kindly station agent kept checking on me because he knew I was anxious to get home. The 11pm bus arrived on time and the bus driver was a hoot. But as I was sitting there, cursing the train that was late by just this much, I texted my friend who was still back in New York. She said she was sorry I was stuck there. I said it’s okay, it’s probably just karma for how smoothly our weekend went and payback for not having to run for the theater. She relayed that to her eleven-year old nephew who then said, “It’s never good to have everything you want in one day,” and that it was totally karma.

He is right.