Delay

Yesterday, as I said I would, I took a Greyhound bus from LA to see my family back home in Phoenix. Plenty happened over the course of the day, and I may or may not cover more of it than this. To begin with, I got going a little before six in the morning. I actually had been up for nearly four hours, having been unable to go back to sleep after waking up. I had maybe two or three hours sleep. It was an inauspicious beginning.

Still, I was doing well. I showered, finished getting my things together and ate some breakfast. Unfortunately, things did not stay entirely good. Shortly after getting on the subway, I hit a snag. Once we got to the second stop, they advised us that police activity on the track ahead was going to hold us in position for ten minutes. This might not sound like much, but it had the effect of keeping me from making the connecting bus.

I try to have some appreciation for the fact that, in spite of the fact that such a thing makes me late, there is someone else having a worse day. In this case, it turned out that someone got hit by a train after "trespassing" on the tracks. It looked as if things must be bad, as there was quite a crowd of police and firefighters at the station where it had happened. I could not help but look bad if I complained much.

This is especially so considering I had already planned an itinerary that could absorb the blow of being a little late. They recommend that you arrive at the station to collect your ticket an hour early, and I was planning to arrive 90 minutes early. I still wound up arriving something like 75 minutes early, or maybe a bit less. I doubt I needed to be as much as ten minutes early, as it happened. Things worked out just fine.