A Winter's Trip across Town

The brisk winter air blows in my face as I set out in the morning. It bites at my forehead, my nose, my ears. My friends and I have a plan to hang out, relax, drink, game, and generally half-enjoy each other’s company today. But, that means heading well across town, from my apartment to our normal hangout spot in the suburbs.

The beginning of the journey is the roughest part. Tourists not understanding how streets work and common road etiquette means the buses in this part of the city are pretty unreliable. Which means it’s often times faster to just walk the half-mile to the metro stop. But, with the cold and the wind chill, the walk, while faster, isn’t a particularly comfortable choice. I still do it, don’t get me wrong. Saving those precious minutes is vital. But I just get to grumble about it. “Stupid cold,” I mutter to myself, pulling my mask out of my pocket and putting it on, mostly to keep my nose warm. It’s still a bit colder than it should be, stupid windchill, and I can feel it on my ears in spite of my hood being up. “Stupid weather,” I mutter to myself as I step into my local corner store.

“Hey, man,” the guy who’s often working here at the weird hours says. He looks at his watch. “A little late for a stop in. Everything good?”

He’s right. It’s almost nine. I’m rarely here between seven thirty in the morning and ten at night. “Sorry, just stopping in to put on a hat. Stupid wind making it cold on my earses,” I tell him, though the second sentence does devolve into muttering somewhere around the world ‘it’. I run my pockets until I make it to my wool hat. It’s in my outer jacket’s inside pocket. Which, of course, is the last one I check. I probably picked it because I figured I’d feel the bump there, forgetting that I pretty much always wear a hoodie under the jacket. Pulling the hat over my ears then putting my hood back up over the hat, I tell the guy half-facetiously, “Have fun today,” and head out the door. He chuckles as I leave.

Now that I don’t have any real parts of my body exposed to the elements, it’s a more pleasant walk the rest of the way to the metro stop. Still takes longer than I’d prefer and it’s still cold, but at least the cold really isn’t painful anymore. And I get to listen to my podcasts as I walk. Catch up on all the stuff that, during the course of a normal week, I get behind on. Because, even though it’s perfectly fine for other people to listen to music while they work, when I’m listening to someone talk about the effects of the big trades in the W, the military appropriations bill, or whatever is going on with the [Ubisoft] this week, people start looking at me like I’m the weird one. Which is true, but it also means they start assuming that I’m slacking off, not doing my work. Which is not true. So, I do my best to catch up whenever I have the time. Like, say, a trip across town.

Half frozen, mostly grumpy at the weather, and entirely enraptured by a discussion of a certain online ticketing service’s legal standing, I make it to the metro stop. I head down the escalator and into the tunnels leading to the train. Not even bothering to take my wallet out of my pocket, much less my card out of my wallet, I walk up to the turnstile, shift my backpack slightly, and try my best to sit on the scanner. On the second attempt, it beeps and the turnstile unlocks. Pushing through, I head into the innards of the subway system.

The tunnels of the station are slightly warmer than outside, mostly because of the lack of wind. There isn’t any real heating, though. Well, none that works well at least. Which means when I sit down to wait for my train, I stay bundled up. Sitting on the bench, I look around. There are a lot of people here. More than I would like. It’s times like this that I wish I still had my big, over the ears headphones. They really projected a good leave me alone vibe that earbuds kind of lack. I do pull my headphones out from my coller and over my jacket slightly, so people can see that I am, in fact, listening to something other than them.

It mostly works in the station at least. Two minutes pass and the train pulls into the station. Getting up, I head to the door directly in front of me. Well, a step to my left, but hey, we can’t always be perfect. The car isn’t as full as the station, so when I sit down, I start to relax. Wrong move. Rule number twelve of public transit: stay intense at all times. See, no matter how full or empty a car seems, there is almost always one or two Subway-Weirdos. If you seem chill or open to it in any way, the Subway-Weirdos will seemingly mystically appear to try and start a conversation with you.

Fortunately enough for me and my rule-forgetting butt, it seems there was only one weirdo in this car. For the moment. He aggressively walks up from the other side of the car and sits down in the seat across the aisle from me. “Hey man,” he begins, loud enough to interrupt my podcast. I make an angry, groaning noise at him as I pull out my phone, rewind the podcast a little so I won’t have missed anything, paused the ‘cast, and glared at him. “Hey,” he protests, “I’m just trying to make friendly conversation. What’s so wrong with that?” Still not answering him, I slowly turn my head to look at him, without moving the rest of my body. “I mean,” he adds, “Why can’t we just talk like normal human beings?” I furrow my brows and slowly cock my head to one side, looking him up and down. Taking him in. He’s kind of creeped out, but doesn’t stop. “Hey, what’s up? How are things? This weather, wow is it a cold one today, amirite?”

I shake my head and look at the lady standing in front of me, holding the pole and following the rules. “Californians,” I grumble with frustration, loud enough for the dude who won’t stop talking to hear. He looks at me confused. I get a chuckle out of the I assume commuter. One or two stop commuters and stubborn men are the only people I know who stand in an empty metro car.

“What?” the talker blurts out, “Hey, I’ve lived here for a year now…” He continues to speak, but I tune him out. Unfortunately, it also means I have to deal with the droning hum of a guy talking in the background, so my podcast is a no-go. So much for using this trip to catch up on my listening. Damnitall. This is why no one likes the Subway-Weirdos. Well, one of the reasons. This is also yet another time that having my big over-ear headphones would have been a help. Flipping through apps on my phone, I switch over to music instead and jam. I’d rather stay up to date on the world than listen to my tunes, especially in public where singing along loudly and experiencing big emotional catharses is considered weird, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy my music playlists. Specifically, I choose my epic playlist. It isn’t particularly cathartic, and a lot of the music is purely instrumental, but it makes everything I do and think feel awesome, powerful, and important. Hence the name. A minute into the first song the playlist shuffle decides to play, we pull into a stop and I am proven correct. The standing woman gives me a polite nod, the talking guy a quick glare, and walks right off the train. A couple other people step in to take her place, though they sit down.

It takes a couple songs and a full additional stop before the Subway-Weirdo finally stops. And it wasn’t even him taking the hint. He just reached his stop and got off the train. Stupid weirdos. I pull out my phone once more, flip through the apps back to my podcasts, and pick up where I left off. Or I guess right before I left off, because of the rewinding. And this time, I make sure to keep my face and body focused to ward off any people who might think I could be one of those definitely one hundred percent real quiet strangers who like being approached by random, boring, talkative people on their travels in public transit.

The explanations of the hearings are fascinating as I enjoy a relatively uneventful ride on the train. Once we hit the edge of the city, near the suburbs, I get off. The train near my apartment heads to the southern suburbs, while my friends hang out over in the south-western suburbs. So, I walk up the stairs to the other line in this metro station and wait. There’s a delay, because the world wants to make up for the ten minutes I wasn’t catching up on podcasts. There aren’t any benches here, because the world also hates me. Leaning against a wall, I wait for the delayed train.

Five minutes turns to fifteen, but eventually the train does roll in. With a sigh, I watch the people file out of the car in front of me before heading into it. I check my podcast against my trip tracker. If nothing happens on the track ahead, I should be switching ‘cast right around the station. Leaning onto my knees to appear to be in intense thought, I listen and ignore the world. This time, I can see the Subway-Weirdo who jumps out of hiding to ambush some poor, unsuspecting lady who’s sitting quietly holding her purse on her lap, probably just trying to go out to the big, good mall in peace. I am almost tempted to go help, but she seems a pro at dealing with weirdos trying to talk to her. Besides, If I did try to help without her giving any pleading glances, that would probably make me one of said weirdos. And I’d have to pause my podcast, which would mean having to switch podcasts on the bus, which might be a distraction. I do look in her direction, in case she needs help, as do a couple of the other passengers, but she just looks frustrated and grumpy, not desperate for aid, so I return to my thinking-face and focus on listening and let the stops and world pass by.

As I’m reaching the end of this podcast, the train is reaching the end of this metro line. My stop. I tune into the world once more while the credits portion of the podcast starts and look around the car. The lady left, probably at the mall stop. The weirdo is still here, this time talking to an old man who’s ignoring him. Or asleep. They’re all the way across the car so it’s kinda hard to tell. Pulling out my phone once more while the podcaster is going through the credits, I look at my remaining podcasts from the last couple weeks. The bus ride should only be around ten minutes, so including walk and wait time, assume fifteen. That’s about the length of my video game podcast’s intro. So, midway through this podcast’s credits, I stop it and press play on the next one. The train comes into the metro station as the intro music plays. Putting my phone away, I head out the doors and through the station to the turnstiles. Once more, rather than remove my wallet, I try sitting on the scanner. It works the first time this go around and I push through, rushing towards the bus bay, just in case the bus is early and will let me sit inside it while we wait for the schedule. It isn’t. Sitting under the shelter of the bus stop, I wait and wonder if anything weird is actually going to happen today. The trip was remarkably smooth. The bus pulls up on time. I’m honestly a little surprised. The whole trip taking public transit and I’m probably going to show up at my friend’s place pretty much when I am supposed to arrive. Good job, city, I suppose. I see a news alert. It caught on fire again, on the north side of my usual metro line. So, not good job, city. Lucky me, I guess, I muse as I enter the bus.