Let me be clear. I’m egregiously behind in my writing. I could give it up, but I did that last year, and I’m really trying not to give up on things this year unless it is absolutely necessary. So I’ll just write in present tense to make it seem like I’m on top of things. Yeah.
Today begins my NYWoF: Long Island Edition.
Back in October, I bought a couple of Groupons for Vamoose bus trips to New York. One of them I used for a December NYCWoF, but I wanted to save the other Groupon for a trip to visit LJ before her winter break is over. The smarty pants is getting her PhD at NYU.
The thing is, LJ doesn’t live in New York City. She lives in Glen Cove, which is on Long Island. In order to get to her house, I took the bus from Rosslyn to NYC, and then entered Penn Station to catch the train to Glen Cove on the Oyster Bay line. I didn’t have very long to wait, but when I take the LIRR, I like to hang out in the LIRR waiting room because the people watching is SPECTACULAR.
First of all, it was about 11pm when I found myself in the waiting room, and as we all know, New York is the city that never sleeps, so the revelers were just starting to come out of the woodwork. Women who looked like they were wearing band-aids for skirts were drinking out of brown paper bags and teetering on 12-inch heels (only a slight exaggeration). Their men…all I can say is that they were ENORMOUS. Huge muscles, spiky hair, leather jackets.
Sitting across from me in the waiting room was a modern day Ms. Havisham. Clad totally in silver, from a fur hat and floor-length fur coat, to her high-heeled (and I mean HIGH-HEELED) ankle boots, I couldn’t help but stare. The woman was wearing more make-up than I’ve ever even owned. If I was more skilled, I would have surreptitiously taken a picture with my camera phone, but this was a new breed of person for me to encounter. I wasn’t sure if she’d notice, and if she did, I had no IDEA what she would do. Hence, I refrained.
The best part of this experience was when trains entered the station. Everyone is waiting around to see which platform their train will pull into. When the information is posted on the huge board in the lobby of the LIRR portion of Penn Station, I swear to God, it’s like the start of the Kentucky Derby. Despite the fact that you have ten minutes to board the train after the platform is posted, people literally race to the escalator. Being Southern, I’m not entirely sure what the big hurry is. Everyone has plenty of time to get on the train, and at 11:15pm, there is always plenty of room for everyone to have a seat.
Once I found my way onto the train, the ride lasted for about another hour before we pulled into Glen Cove station, after transferring at Jamaica of course. I think that’s the only thing I don’t like about the LIRR. They named one of their stations after a tropical island, and despite its name, it is still bitterly cold outside.
What a tease.
