Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Something about popping open my umbrella as the rain started up this morning reminded me of a recurring dream I used to have as a child. Only I can't quite remember the details of the dream other than the warm feeling I got knowing that I had everything I needed with me for any-and-all of Anna's contingencies (which may or may not necessarily be what everyone else would consider a contingency). Perhaps this dream was a vision into the future. Certainly the self-contained preparedness I felt while I walked under the cocoon of my umbrella evoked that same satisfied feeling I vaguely remember from my childhood dream.
To this end, I have with me at all times my urban survival bag (by Coach), which contains everything I deem necessary to optimum commuting. Contents:
1) my wallet with monthly subway pass within thumb-and-index-finger-reach so that while I am walking, I can easily reach my hand into my purse and pull out the card without stopping. My wallet also contains cash, credit cards, and a road-side service card.
2) my work shoes because getting to my office requires a significant walk from the station. The walking shoes I wear are a pair of black suede Steve Madden sneakers which, while still sneakers, are a tad more elegant than the white gym shoes I see a lot of women wearing but can't bring myself to don.
3) One of the three magazines to which I subscribe (the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, or Harper's), plus one book
4) One water bottle
5) A Brookstone umbrella (resistant to blowing inside-out when windy but poorly designed to retract)
6) Sunglasses
7) Miniature sewing kit
8) A tape measure (you just never know what you might want to measure)
9) A brush (sometimes)
10) Altoids and Advil
11) Lipstick
12) Small hand cream
13) A trigger-snap keychain hooked to the strap of my purse so that I never have to go rooting for my keys.
No cell phone you may have noted. That would take the fun out of real urban survival and I maintain gives you a false sense of security. No flashlight. No food. And no weapon of any kind.
The survival bag and the urban commuter (me) have become a fine-tuned machine over the last 10 months since I started working in the city. Locking the car, swiping the T-pass, grabbing the free paper, choosing the T-car that puts you closest to the exit, picking the seat least likely to attract someone's extra poundage spilling onto your lap (a seat next to a pole or in a corner I find is best), bounding the stairs and not the escalator, crossing the street diagonally when the 4-way walk sign turns green, etc. have become as sleek and efficient as the tiger navigating the jungle.
Almost. An absolute essential feature to a successful, harried-free commute is the fine art of anticipation. Like a good hunter, you must be able to seize an opportunity in a split second. Driving your car you feel the lane you have to move to. Or maybe it's not so much feel as it is the quick-second-culmination of cues that prompts you to accelerate quickly and zip over to the lane that just opened up to the right while the car in front of you slowed down suddenly due to some obstruction in the road. Or, factoring in the weather on a warm, sunny summer evening, you avoid the back beach road. Or doing a speedy once-over as you enter the train, you seat yourself as far away as possible to whomever you in a nano-second have deemed likely to cough contagiously in the immediate vicinity of your air space. Or, you don't disembark at your usual station, but the one before it if it's raining because you know the entranceway to that station always floods and your shoes will get very wet -- except in summer when you can take off your sandals and wade through the water in your bare feet. Few are willing to do this and so you have just avoided the crowds making their way over to the drier station.
Luck -- is helpful...like the time the telephone pole landed across the roadway just after I drove past it. The not-so-lucky cars were stranded for hours because the divider barriers made it impossible to turn around...
Agility and strength -- are crucial components to timely, manageable commuting. Sprinting two blocks, or skipping down stairs three at a time if all the external cues tell me I can catch the approaching (or waiting) train can mean the difference between getting home at 5:30 p.m. (I've a government job, remember?), or 6 p.m. i.e. the sudden rush of warm air that gets expelled from a tunnel when a train is approaching and which you can feel all the way up on the sidewalk leading into the station tells me to MOVE! Applying your gym-buffed muscles to shoveling out your car from under a snow drift without the worry that your back will go out or that you'll freeze to death because you only have the strength to lift baby-scoops of snow is a great thing too.
Trouble Spots -- Any good urban survivalist has a keen sense of 'smell' -- an awareness of subtle changes that indicate things are not OK. Like the jungle animal, the difference between enjoying a life swinging from trees and being somebody's next dinner is analogous to locking your car door with you safely inside listening to a Fionna Apple CD and the not so pleasant scenario of you not quite hitting the Lock button in time... My new parking spot at the T-Station is just such a trouble spot. It is poorly lit, somewhat abandoned, and it is now getting awfully dark early. So is this potential danger worth the four dollars I am saving a day because I happened to just get a parking sticker that allows me to park for free on this lot? Well if I weren't such a highly subsidized woman and instead a single mother supporting two kids on the meager salary mentioned in one of my previous blogs (Oct. 14), the one that would leave me with about $1000 disposable income for the entire year without having yet bought food, the one that is being eaten away at because the state's budget woes are being pushed down onto the people who can least afford it, well I wouldn't even be able to contemplate such a question, would I*...
* I bet you all were starting to wonder how I was going to weave my liberal agenda into this blog, weren't you?
To this end, I have with me at all times my urban survival bag (by Coach), which contains everything I deem necessary to optimum commuting. Contents:
1) my wallet with monthly subway pass within thumb-and-index-finger-reach so that while I am walking, I can easily reach my hand into my purse and pull out the card without stopping. My wallet also contains cash, credit cards, and a road-side service card.
2) my work shoes because getting to my office requires a significant walk from the station. The walking shoes I wear are a pair of black suede Steve Madden sneakers which, while still sneakers, are a tad more elegant than the white gym shoes I see a lot of women wearing but can't bring myself to don.
3) One of the three magazines to which I subscribe (the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, or Harper's), plus one book
4) One water bottle
5) A Brookstone umbrella (resistant to blowing inside-out when windy but poorly designed to retract)
6) Sunglasses
7) Miniature sewing kit
8) A tape measure (you just never know what you might want to measure)
9) A brush (sometimes)
10) Altoids and Advil
11) Lipstick
12) Small hand cream
13) A trigger-snap keychain hooked to the strap of my purse so that I never have to go rooting for my keys.
No cell phone you may have noted. That would take the fun out of real urban survival and I maintain gives you a false sense of security. No flashlight. No food. And no weapon of any kind.
The survival bag and the urban commuter (me) have become a fine-tuned machine over the last 10 months since I started working in the city. Locking the car, swiping the T-pass, grabbing the free paper, choosing the T-car that puts you closest to the exit, picking the seat least likely to attract someone's extra poundage spilling onto your lap (a seat next to a pole or in a corner I find is best), bounding the stairs and not the escalator, crossing the street diagonally when the 4-way walk sign turns green, etc. have become as sleek and efficient as the tiger navigating the jungle.
Almost. An absolute essential feature to a successful, harried-free commute is the fine art of anticipation. Like a good hunter, you must be able to seize an opportunity in a split second. Driving your car you feel the lane you have to move to. Or maybe it's not so much feel as it is the quick-second-culmination of cues that prompts you to accelerate quickly and zip over to the lane that just opened up to the right while the car in front of you slowed down suddenly due to some obstruction in the road. Or, factoring in the weather on a warm, sunny summer evening, you avoid the back beach road. Or doing a speedy once-over as you enter the train, you seat yourself as far away as possible to whomever you in a nano-second have deemed likely to cough contagiously in the immediate vicinity of your air space. Or, you don't disembark at your usual station, but the one before it if it's raining because you know the entranceway to that station always floods and your shoes will get very wet -- except in summer when you can take off your sandals and wade through the water in your bare feet. Few are willing to do this and so you have just avoided the crowds making their way over to the drier station.
Luck -- is helpful...like the time the telephone pole landed across the roadway just after I drove past it. The not-so-lucky cars were stranded for hours because the divider barriers made it impossible to turn around...
Agility and strength -- are crucial components to timely, manageable commuting. Sprinting two blocks, or skipping down stairs three at a time if all the external cues tell me I can catch the approaching (or waiting) train can mean the difference between getting home at 5:30 p.m. (I've a government job, remember?), or 6 p.m. i.e. the sudden rush of warm air that gets expelled from a tunnel when a train is approaching and which you can feel all the way up on the sidewalk leading into the station tells me to MOVE! Applying your gym-buffed muscles to shoveling out your car from under a snow drift without the worry that your back will go out or that you'll freeze to death because you only have the strength to lift baby-scoops of snow is a great thing too.
Trouble Spots -- Any good urban survivalist has a keen sense of 'smell' -- an awareness of subtle changes that indicate things are not OK. Like the jungle animal, the difference between enjoying a life swinging from trees and being somebody's next dinner is analogous to locking your car door with you safely inside listening to a Fionna Apple CD and the not so pleasant scenario of you not quite hitting the Lock button in time... My new parking spot at the T-Station is just such a trouble spot. It is poorly lit, somewhat abandoned, and it is now getting awfully dark early. So is this potential danger worth the four dollars I am saving a day because I happened to just get a parking sticker that allows me to park for free on this lot? Well if I weren't such a highly subsidized woman and instead a single mother supporting two kids on the meager salary mentioned in one of my previous blogs (Oct. 14), the one that would leave me with about $1000 disposable income for the entire year without having yet bought food, the one that is being eaten away at because the state's budget woes are being pushed down onto the people who can least afford it, well I wouldn't even be able to contemplate such a question, would I*...
* I bet you all were starting to wonder how I was going to weave my liberal agenda into this blog, weren't you?
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