A Wrinkle in My Commute

I usually enjoy taking the bus to work when it’s freezing outside and the bus is warm with its heater on. But at times the commute is far from ideal. Yesterday morning as I was waiting for the 5:20am bus at 5:10a.m., having missed the 5:10am bus by at most a minute, I talked to someone who had taken the 5:20am bus the week before as I had. However we differed in our version of what bus we took. I thought only Bus 950 runs at 5:20a.m. and commented that we’d need to move to the Bus 950 bay as I had to last week, whereas my companion said she took Bus 980 at 5:20a.m. So we checked the posted bus schedules and were floored when neither schedule showed a 5:20am departure. That meant we’d have to wait 20 minutes in the freezing weather for the next bus. I was glad I was dressed for a place like Alaska in the winter, though I could feel the wind bore through my long johns. As the posted schedules were correct, no bus came at 5:20a.m. Bus 980 came eventually on its scheduled time of 5:30a.m. and took us to the Silver metro line where I got on the train and promptly went for a nap. At East Falls Church, the last train station whose platform is exposed to the elements, I was awaken to an announcement that the train I was on broke down due to mechanical problems. We were to leave the train and wait on the platform for another train to come. I checked the time and saw that it had taken the train 40 minutes to get to this station instead of the usual 25 minutes. So the train must have been idled or slow prior to stopping completely, while I was in and out of my nap. Again, I was glad I had more clothes on myself than I would truly need otherwise. I got to work about 30 minutes later than it should have taken me if things went smoothly. The way home was better, although I had to wait for the Silver train longer than normal. I’ve never seen the electronic postings on the platform be wrong before until yesterday. The train that pulled away as I walked down the stairs to the platform was the Orange train. The electronic sign posted that the next train would be the Silver line. That was wrong. In fact, two Blue trains and another Orange train came before a Silver train finally showed up. Well, it was not as bad as bad could be, but it still put a wrinkle in a commuting day.