Friday’s insanity
A little bit of madness has put me on a train to Long Island at 5:11pm on a Friday afternoon. A little bit of madness was a direct result of my overly laid-back attitude to planning ahead and some assumptions that I could have checked but didn’t (always thinking of them at the completely wrong times).
One of my mistakes was not properly confirming that the HI hostel in NYC’s Upper West-Side would be accessible on shabbat. I wasn’t sure about staying there in a dorm in the first place over shabbat, but considering that a synagogue congregated there weekly I had assumed that the building must be accessible with non-electronic keys. My second mistake was to book it too late, landing me only one night’s tenure. This meant I would have to check out on shabbat, which would be difficult. So it was only on Thursday that I managed to get out emails asking some shuls for a place to eat (which came readily), and on late Thursday night asking for a place to stay. Again this American summer craze of everyone going away meant that one of my contacts in the area wasn’t able to find anything. The other seems to have not got my message and won’t check the phone machine till Monday. But some of this I wasn’t able to check until I got back from DC.
And that was also a story. I had in fact fallen asleep, wrapped in a towel, working on my computer, light on, at the Schmidts’ place in Silver Spring (just outside DC). Indeed, I hadn’t yet booked the back bus to NYC, nor set an alarm to wake me. Somehow I woke up at 5:30am. I booked a ticket, realising after I had written some long-awaited emails that I would need to even then hurry to catch the 9:30 bus. But the morning went well and I got to speak Daniella, and we went to pick up a sandwich for lunch on the way to the train station that would take me down the road from the bus station. The sandwich took a number of minutes to prepare and I went across the road to get a banana to eat then, returned and it was still being made, then sealed on the grill, then cut into a foam take-out box, then passed into my hands. I ran into Daniella’s car, where she waited in her pyjamas, and she drove me to the station. I ran down a very long flight of stairs and jumped aboard a train, which proceeded to crawl along the tracks, citing another train immediately in front of it. A 22 minute ride took 32, and I jumped off the train at Gallery Place at 9:24. I ran up the escalator, up the road to I St, and looked for a bus, which I boarded at 9:27.
The bus got me back into NYC at 2, when I soon tried calling a few people who may have been promising for an Upper West-Side weekend. No go. In all cases I was headed back to Brooklyn where I would be able to get my shabbat clothing (I otherwise had only a 3-day-pack) from the appartment where I stayed last week. When the train arrived I wandered down the streets, worried about the situation but knowing that Brooklyn again was at least an option. Reuven and Golda, who I had been staying with, would be away for Shabbat, at Woodmere in Long Island (they’d actually been suggesting last weekend that I spend this shabbat there). So I arrived at their home door, keyed the combination, turned the handle and was locked out… I called Reuven to clarify (I should have a day earlier, but when?), and found that Golda had double-locked it, not realising I had things to collect before shabbat. A little more frustrated, I logged online on their front step and just confirmed that no life-changing emails had come in.
So there I was, with no clean clothes and no place for shabbat. Okay, maybe more than no clean clothes. There was a shirt that I didn’t use in DC because I didn’t really get out out night, because Daniella was sick. And there was a pair of pants that I spilt my breakfast on on Thursday morning, that was subsequently washed of its milk. I soon found a target to buu
Reuven offered that we could meet to exchange keys at Atlantic Ave Station, but that he would probably be able to find a place for me to stay at Woodmere. Another call with no results in Manhattan; Reuven not answering his phone while at Atlantic Ave, so no key to Brooklyn (it turns out he was late). Eight dollars later I was going to Woodmere, Long Island…