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15_the_circle) wrote2007-01-31 11:15 pm
coda
[OT from cottage renovations]
I have often been asked why I had chosen to stay with this company, and for that matter its pre-merger pre-bankruptcy predecessor. there had been, of course, a variety of reasons. for the previous one it was an abiding curiosity about how it would end and what it would be like to ride one all the way down, in the manner of Slim Pickens in Kubrick's Dr Strangelove:
for the latter my response had been "working here has been a continuous living performance of theatre-of-the-absurd.
where else might one find anything that could come even close to matching it?"
so it came as no surprise for my last day there to end on a comical note.
I was scheduled to catch a 15:30 Amtrak train down the Northeast Corridor.
the objective was to make it back to Union Station in time to connect to the last MARC train of the evening.
the first plan for getting to the station from HQ was to call for a cab.
but that was quoted at around $40 so in order to save the expense one of the people I had been working with said she would drive me there.
then she got tied up in a meeting so my former manager said he would drive me.
but he, too, became preoccupied so another colleague volunteered to drive.
by the time we got to the Mk. 4 plan time was a little short but he was confident we could get there in time, so off we went.
and then ran out of fuel.
on the New Jersey turnpike.
two miles before exit 11.
as disruptions go it was actually rather minor. roadside assistance was summoned, and forty minutes and $30 later a gallon of gasoline was delivered. the station agent exchanged the missed train's ticket for one good on the next one without any fuss, and though that one misses the MARC train by four minutes (on the approach into Washington looking out the window to the R one can see it heading out the CSX connecting track for points West) the slower-but-perfectly-feasible alternative is to take a Red Line train out to Shady Grove. I had been planning on catching the feeder bus back to the Grove but kind friends insisted on coming to pick me up at the subway station, providing a welcome opportunity to visit with them for a few minutes before coming in to face the kitties.
Gosh, what a lousy day!
re: Gosh, what a lousy day!
thank you, that's v. kind of you.
but what I was trying to convey was that neither the incident nor the day were lousy. just comical, and completely fitting as an end-of-gig experience.