Hmm.

I had a logistically impossible day, transportationwise, and the bike was too impractical for the various tasks at hand, so I grudgingly took the T for the first time since the new fare's kicked in.* 

First off, let me just say that the intermediary step of the Charlie Ticket was wasteful, unnecessary, and, I am convinced, intentionally confusing.  The whole implementation of the new Automated Fare System was effected for maximum confusion and waste. 

I had a ticket left over from late last year with ten bucks on it, and discovered that my fare with the ticket had jumped not just from $1.25 to $1.70, but to $2.00.  Nickel and dime me, bitches.  See where it gets you.

As for where it got me, I first had to ride all the way from Davis Square back to JFK/UMass.  Oh, the memories!  It was around 10:30 a.m., but there were two young riders who got on separately at South Station, must have been—maybe Downtown Xing—both chowing down on some serious soul food. 

One bore an uncanny and unfortunate resemblance to a four-hundred pound slug and was slurping a five course pasta dinner out of a white styrene trough across from me.  You know I have issues with this. (T-etiquette rule #6: "Nothing physically tangible goes in any orifice and nothing comes out. Nothing.") I'm seeing someone for it, but I'm not there yet.  In the ensuing fit of near apoplexy I was very lucky not to swallow my tongue. 

The funny thing is, I had fled from the first car I was in to this one, because there was a gentleman in the first who seemed to want to hack up a lung all over me.  I was like, I've got two, thanks.  But he insisted.  So I had to excuse myself.

The grass is always greener innit?

I knew exactly what would happen with the slug when we reached JFK, by the way.  He had finished sucking down his brunch (remember, it was not even ten-thirty in the morning at the time), and had set his table service on the seat next to him for the help to take care of.  Of course he left it there when he got off at JFK. 

Now, I have friends—two in particular I'm thinking of here—who don't care about their personal safety when faced with this kind of affront.  If they witness someone littering, they will open up a can of instant whoop-ass on them without even considering the consequences.  I admire them both beyond measure, but I prefer a more, erm, subtle approach.  I'm more the type to make a little note in my moleskine—take that, you big slug!--and go home and race up to my little parapet in my undisclosed location in Somerville, and memorialize every intimate detail for posterity, so that future generations might know what trials we had to live through back in the day. 

I mean, this guy coulda crushed me like a bug, and it was after morning rush hour, and there was really no one around to use as a human shield should the need arise.  I'm not justifying my inaction, but I had to ask myself, "is it worth months of physical therapy and spending the rest of your life disfigured and in crippling pain?"  And anyway, there are those signs all over the T that say "your tax money goes to clean these cars," right? So if your tax money is going for that anyway, why not get your money's worth, right? 

Still, I find the sights, smells, and sounds of chowing down a little stomach-churning out of proper context.  Eating is natural, of course, but the way people eat on the run evokes traumatic flash-backs to Neanderthal scavengers for me.  Honestly, I don't like to be reminded of how hard life was for our closest hominid relatives back then, before they unceremoniously died out. 

Those Human Genome People have determined that we (Homo sapiens, that is) coexisted with them (Homo neanderthalensis) but "The two hominids split into separate species approximately 400,000 years ago, with no evidence of any significant crossbreeding between the two after that time." I have a theory that it had something to do with their table manners.

I see people wolfing down their meals in Neanderthal fashion these days, and I always want to tell them, "Chew!  Chew!" Because I have another theory that the Neanderthal's died out because they didn't chew their food thoroughly.  They devoured whatever they could on the run.  Most of them died from choking, poor dears.  On old bones left behind by Homo sapiens on our fun little hunting expeditions and family picnics, to which they were not invited because they could not behave. 

Anyway, eating on the T would be poignant were it not so downright disgusting.  Inconsiderate, too, of course, but mainly disgusting.  McDonald's in Chinatown.  That's poignant. 

On my way home it was worse, if you can imagine, but in a different way.  It was between four-thirty and five o-clock, when the fun really begins.  I had just been to the gym, and was just going to hop on the T at Downtown Crossing and hop off at Davis Square, but the T had other plans for me.

The train never made it to ten miles an hour, I swear.  It would leave the station at about 4 mph, and then come to a grinding halt about three feet into the tunnel.  It would sit interminably.  Five, ten minutes.  And then it would putt-putt-putt along at 4 mph again, until it was just this side of the next station, but before it reached the platform it would come to a grinding halt again, and sit interminably, another five, ten minutes.  Every stop from Downtown Crossing to Davis Square.  Eight stops.  It wasn't eighty minutes, but it easily could have been.  It was at least forty-five or fifty.

Frickin nightmare.

I'm finally free at Davis, and stagger toward an MBTA ambassador who is a dead ringer for Niecy Nash—Deputy Raineesha Williams on Reno 911!.  Love Niecy Nash.  LOVE. HER.  But not her MBTA incarnation.  Sorry. 

I go up to her.  I'm like, "Can I ask you a question?"

She purses her lips, flutters her eyelashes and rolls her eyes back into her head.

I'm like, "Um, is that a yes or a no?"

Nothing.

"OK, like, blink once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no,' OK?"

Nothing.

I'm starting to panic.  "Are you choking?  Do you need the Heimlich?"

Still nothing. 

"A regular lick?" 

Finally I just decide to go ahead with my question:  "Where can I get one of those plastic Charlie cards?"

She rolls her eyes, pops her neck, and snaps her gum all at once, with a mind-boggling precision, and—ploop!--there it is. 

She was like some newfangled Charlie Card dispenser.  Better than a life-size PEZ!  Once they run out of cards (and they will) that's what those MBTA sphinxes should be trained to do.  Ploop! 

"Thank you," I mouthed and signed to her.  And I meant it.  That sucker's gonna save me thirty cents a trip in the future!
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* As many of you know, I have sworn off the T—I was getting all T-raged-out—but in doing so I acknowledged that there would be times—albeit few and far between—when to find alternatives would be even more taxing and impractical than actually taking the T, and while I like to think I am principled, I am certainly no martyr.  I'm not really all that dogmatic, even. For example, I quit smoking years ago, but have bummed the odd cigarette when the mood mandated it.

My motivation for quitting the T was not to suffer more—it was not like a hunger strike. It was not even rightly a protest. My motivation for quitting the T had something to do with the fact that I could cut my commute time in half if I switched to my bike. I was already paying the fools at the MBTA to torture me and treat me bad, and the idea of paying them more—significantly more—well, let's say it offended my sensibilities, and leave it at that.