About a year ago, my lifestyle changed dramatically when my beloved VW Golf was totaled in a multi-car collision. Thankfully, I wasn’t in the car at the time. It was parked peacefully, legitimately, minding its own business street side when the accident occurred, and it served as an airbag for one of the cars spinning out of control. A total loss. But since the car was nine years old, with 140,000 miles on it, my insurance pay out was just a few thousand dollars. Not enough to replace it. So after I maxxed out the days that my insurance pays for a rental, I became a train commuter.
There are a lot of advantages to taking the train versus driving to work in the NYC metro area. It’s a far healthier lifestyle. I get more exercise since I have to walk further to the station than I walked back and forth to my car. There’s a lot less stress letting someone else do the work of getting there while meanwhile I can read, write, or send cutesy text messages to other people. I’ve almost missed my stop on several occasions because I get so immeresed in these activities, and the time goes amazingly quick compared to sitting on a parkway, staring at an endless carpet of cars stretching into the distance, searching with a fool’s hope for a sign of movement.
I also see a lot more people by traveling on the train, and as a writer, that makes for occasional inspiration. I get to eavesdrop on one-sided cellphone conversations all the time. Strangely, they’re almost always some kind of fight between girlfriend and boyfriend, daughter and controlling mother, or divorced husband negotiating child visitation with wife. Or maybe people just sound angrier on their cell phones.
The morning trip is blissful. I do a reverse commute so everyone gets a two-person or three-person seat to themselves, often with lots of empty seats in front and behind them, and everyone is sleeping, looking as cozy as though they were tucked in their beds. It’s quiet as a library and I can read and write with full concentration.
Then there’s the occasional cute conductor to pique my interest and random people carting tons of luggage, looking horribly aggravated as they lumber to disembark at Jamaica station, onward to the shuttle at JFK (this has gotta be one of the greatest miseries in life).
And I now have the self-righteous claim that I’m reducing my carbon footprint by commuting. I do care about the environment, but the truth is I’m just too cheap to buy another car.
