Waiting for My Ride Home

When I moved to NYC, I had grand plans of taking one photo per day to document my new city life. That didn't happen, for a number of reasons, and so I thought I'd try it here in Boston. I don't know if I'll actually post one picture per day; there are a lot of bloggers doing "30 days of photos" as well as a 365 photo project over at Flickr, and I'm not sure I'm that organized or will really remember to do it. I'm thinking that my only rule is that the pictures have to be about something I see or experience on a regular basis...but whatever, it's my game and I can make up the rules, or throw them out altogether if I so choose. So there.

At any rate...heeeeere's photo #1:

It's not a great photo, but is of something that has much daily importance in my new life. It's the commuter rail departure board from South Station. It's a large monolith that hangs from the ceiling, and I'm extremely interested to know why it isn't covered in pigeon poop, because there are lots of pigeons inside the building. But I digress. The commuter rail board has a twin that marks Amtrak departures, and then there is a ginormous one in between that is currently just a big, black, blank monolith just screaming for some prank by MIT kids. I walk to South Station after work and join a couple hundred other people standing around waiting for the gate numbers to be announced. When they are, there is a mad dash for the train that makes me think of the way ants swarm and totally freak out when you step on the ant hill. Even though there is generally a good 10 minutes to board the train between the time the gate is announced and when the train leaves, people dash anyway so they can get their choice seat. For me, it's a window seat in one of the last two trains, and not near anyone talking loudly on a cell phone. Also to be avoided is anyone who remotely resembles a tourist, women in pairs, or people with small children...all have the capacity to drown out my ipod, which seems to be stuck on a low volume setting at the moment. And, I discovered today that it is actually quite possible to fall off a moving commuter rail train. Nope, not hard at all. (It wasn't me, it was actually one of the conductors, and it was allllmost stopped and he didn't really fall, just kind of stumbled as he tried to jump off, but it set my mind reeling with possibilities just the same).