I have been taking the T since this cold-snap.  (I'd still be riding my bike to work in Back Bay if I lived in Dot, but my commute from Davis Square takes about the same amount of time—thirty-five to forty minutes—as cycling in.  From JFK it took forty minutes minimum by T—including a ten-minute walk to the station, but only half that by bike.)

But I have found myself leaving the house about an hour and fifteen minutes before I have to be at work in the morning, because the thicker into rush hour you get the longer and infinitely more repulsive the commute.  If I get to Davis at a quarter- to ten-to-eight I get to Arlington about twenty after.  If I get to Davis at eight, I might not make it to work by nine—or I'll have about five minutes to spare.

The red line and I have not yet reached an understanding, though—every morning I miss my inbound train by mere seconds—even though every morning I get there a few minutes earlier than the morning before in the hopes of one day catching it at that elusive time before it's packed.

I have actually altered my afternoon/evening routine to avoid the crush on the way home, too.  Instead of heading home during rush hour, I've been heading to the gym, although I can often go in the middle of the day before afternoon classes.  The gym's just as boring after five.  But I take my time, and have a steam bath afterwards.

But this is why I prefer riding my bike: as soon as I enter the T system, I am trapped.  I am underground for as long as it takes them to get their shit together and get me from point A to point B, and there's really nothing I can do to hasten my release, no higher authority I can appeal to to secure my freedom, nothing I can do but passively surrender to the T.  Particularly when I am actually on the train.  And that bugs me.

And to make matters worse, I am trapped with thousands of other people who are trapped, too. And that, dear friends, is a catastrophe—if not outright cannibalism—waiting to happen.

Some stations strike me as real death traps. Arlington is one.  If anything happened in that station, everyone in it would perish. There is one narrow stairway on either side leading up to a narrow corridor a city block long that would fill with dark black smoke and masses of people trampling each other to get out almost instantaneously.

I realize they're working on the station, and that this escape route is temporary, but should anything happen in the meantime, I certainly don't trust the T to have any kind of Plan B to rescue imperiled commuters from their imminent doom. 

After this next cold snap—it's downright balmy today compared to what it's going to be later this week—it's back to the bike.