It’s rain falling, not molten lava

Today was one of the worst commuting experiences of my life, and that includes riding next to precarious cliff faces in rusting flatbeds driven by drunk maniacs in rural Mexico. There was some rain this morning (was it even that excessive?) and Long Island (actually most of NY by the sounds of things) decided to throw in the towel (pun intended) and have stuff wash away, or alternatively pool the water up and start to make stuff float. Read on for more about the girls in bikinis swimming on the Long Island Expressway…

OK, I lied about the girls in bikinis. There were none. There were, however, thousands of commuters who enjoyed their 3 hour train “ride” with me this morning. We went roughly 12 miles. That’s not very good progress. The weather was weird this morning, and it rained, but it really didn’t feel like I should start looking for a dude called Noah who would be gloating around about now and start bargaining with him. But I could sense trouble when the board at the station showed “8:04am Train - On time”, but the time was 8:20am. That was the first clue that something was amiss. There was lightning around and obviously it struck something important, like maybe the bar where the LIRR signal officers were having their last pre-work round of Schnapps. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I got on the train, and then I got home 5 hours later, after I was held hostage on the train in between stations and then braved the crowds to catch a cab back home.

Cities in this day and age should expect water to fall from the sky at some point. Using the basic laws of gravity, (rail) roads should be designed to not become swimming pools when water comes falling from the sky.

Note: Water will fall from the sky again soon. It may be in ice form, in which case the preparations on the ground may need to be geared towards combating the slipperiness of this substance.

Note: I don’t blame the LIRR for the rain. I do, however, suspect it must be not impossible to have tracks which work when it rains, and I do think it may be excessive holding me hostage on a train for 3 hours.