To those of you who think highly of mass transit - nowhere is it as great as New York City. Philadelphia tries really, really hard. But Septa still pales in comparison.
Now on a normal day, I found Septa to be pretty tolerable. It got me where I needed to go in a decent amount of time. And usually I could get on and off my train or bus with minimal disturbances from other passengers. There would be the occasional crazy homeless person, or the hipster chick who obviously didn't shower, the obnoxious parent/child combo, or the weirdo flashing his penis everywhere... but I'd found them to be few and far between. And usually I could avoid all that by pretending to be occupied with my phone or MP3 player.
However, you never realize how much Septa means to you until they decide to go on strike. In autumn. When while it's not freezing yet it's still really cold - way too cold to tolerate walking up to 30 blocks to get somewhere. So you're stuck either hitching a ride with someone, or walking, or finding some other means of getting where you need to be. And then you realize just how fucking great Septa is while all this is going on.
Septa decided to go on strike during one of the worst quarters of my college career (so far). Normal people who were in my predicament probably would have just skipped class and stayed home. But see, this was a really terrible quarter. I'd already skipped more than my allotted time due to way more important things - like sleeping in or wanting to go shopping. Or just plain not wanting to put up with the bullshit going on in that class on that particular day. So this week I really needed to go to class to prove that despite my attitude I'm actually a very serious student. Look, I even did extra homework and everything!
The first few days were alright. My college, the reasonable people that they pretended to be, canceled classes due to the number of students who commute not being able to attend classes anyway. But eventually the strike got too extreme even for them, so they were forced to go on with classes as usual. And of course it would be the students' fault for not being able to attend. Because we're all adults and therefore resourceful enough to find a way into a highly congested city at 8AM without fail. (An even more congested city as with mass transit down, there were three times as many cars. Traffic was a royal nightmare, and I don't even drive.)
So I did what any other college kid would do. I walked. I left at 6:30 in the morning and walked the 20-some odd blocks to campus every day during that strike. Because I was too much of a chicken to ask for a ride, and way too poor to get a taxi service. I think I got quite the workout.
You can probably guess how happy I was when Septa gave up on their strike and the subways went back to running. I could sleep past 5 again!
As for baseball...
Baseball and I have a terrible relationship. The sport itself hates me. I'm convinced of this.
Because no matter where I live, ever since entering college, the local team has made it to the World Series.
If you've ever seen a local population's response to their team entering the World Series, you'll get me when I say this: Baseball is evil.
It's evil and it brings out the worst in people.
I live in Philadelphia for two years. Both years, the Phillies made it to the World Series. And then I move to Dallas and the Rangers make it. Baseball is out to get me.
But I don't care about the Rangers. They didn't personally affect me this time around (thank Earth). No, but I've got a personal bone to pick with the Phillies. Philadelphians take their baseball VERY seriously. So seriously that is the team loses? They riot. And if the team wins? They riot even more.
Now imagine all this while Septa was out of commission. Yeah. Chew on that thought for a while. I walked to campus with a lead pipe.
Though the year before I watched the festivities from atop a streetlamp. That was pretty cool. I saw a car get flipped over and someone set a newstand on fire. All in the name of the team's victory of course.
And here is where I talk about snow and how silly it is. Snow is also something that is out to get people.
Because last year I lived through snowstorm after snowstorm. And it always snowed on Wednesday night, thus canceling my class on Thursday. It could've snowed at any other time and I would've been alright with it. But I actually liked my Thursday class! I worked hard for that one! Why couldn't it snow when I had a double on Tuesday? Or even Monday? I'd have liked an extended weekend.
But without fail, always Wednesday night. I'd look out my apartment window Thursday morning and it would look like this:
And I just knew there wouldn't be class. My alarm clock got a lot of mornings off that quarter.
See, normally, when you're a student and you find out class in canceled for snow, you react like thus:
No matter how old you get, that joyous feeling of "Yeah! No school! Snow day! HOORAY!" never goes away. Without fail, you will feel happy about it.
However, when you've had a snow day on the same day every week for three weeks, and there's now an unnavigable ocean of frozen whiteness outside your apartment of which you're lucky if you can even swim through.... Yeah, it's not so happy anymore. Snow sucks when you can't even go to the grocery store down the road to replenish your hot cocoa supply. At this point you just want the snow to fuck off so you can get back to business as usual.
And when the snow finally does go away and you find out that even though you had to miss almost a month's worth of classes, you still have to do the really big final?
No picture on Google could ever properly express how we felt.
In a war against snow you cannot win. No matter where you live. Snow will always get the best of you. It will make you miss your favorite class for a month if you let it. It will keep you from your friends, from fast food, and from hot cocoa. It is evil.
And fast forward to now, where I am living in Dallas and we're lucky to even see some flurries. This area wouldn't know real snow if it smacked it across the face with its frozen over dick.
But that's okay because if it were to blizzard, if the DART line were to shut down, and the Rangers made it to the World Series all at the same time... At least I'll be prepared.
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