Unbelievable

Dane Cook (despite being fairly annoying in general, is actually a pretty funny comedian. They should just stop letting him do movies, give interviews, appear at awards shows, etc) has this bit where he talks about the difference between men and women when they get angry. I don't remember the exact wording now, but he says that when men get angry about something, they tend to get a certain look on their face, shake their heads and mutter "unbeLIEVable..." under their breath. I can't say if this is true for mankind as a whole, but it's definitely true of every man in my family so for now we'll say he's right. I'm willing to bet that right now in your head you can see at least one of the men in your life (or yourself, if you are a man) doing this.

That brings me to this morning, when I was trying to get to work. It was a total fiasco, the result of which is that I've never before heard that many people doing the "unbelievable" utter at the same time in my life. Men and women, young and old, in English and I'm pretty sure in Spanish, Russian, Italian, etc. (I don't speak Spanish, Russian or Italian, but this is a kind of frustration that transcends language)

I knew there was a problem as soon as I got off the bus this morning. The sheer number of people standing on the platform with a train in the station was a clear indication that this would not be a good morning. The official word was there was a power problem at Aquarium station. An announcement said they were running trains to the airport and then busing people in to Government Center from there.

In reality, the trains were barely running to Airport, the shuttle bus situation was a joke, and people as far as the eye could see were calling their places of business to say they'd be late. I had to let two trains go by before there was one I could even get on, and then it took about 20 minutes to get the TWO stops to Airport. Once there, it was a fight with a ridiculous crowd of people to try and get to the other side of the platform and get on the bus. Only to find that what I originally thought was a ridiculous crowd of people was nothing compared to what I was in store for. Here is a picture I took this morning while waiting for the shuttle buses.

This many people waiting, and three little buses showed up. In the mass confusion, we learned that there were no shuttle buses running to Maverick, so if anyone had to go there, they had a nice walk to look forward to. The buses to the airport terminals were still trying to run their regular routes but people were so insane at this point they were trying to get on any kind of vehicle that pulled up, so the T employees were basically herding us like cattle. Eventually someone got smart and started routing Silver Line buses to us, because the Silver Line Runs from the airport to South Station and this way people could at least get into the city and get public transportation from there. So, my commute this morning ended up being Orient Heights to Airport to South Station to Park Street to Boylston. Blue to Silver to Red to Green. I got to work a full two hours after I left my apartment.

Unbelievable was really the only way to describe it.