Jersey - What a trip!

  After searching for a job for seven months I finally found a position that I really think I can enjoy and excel in!  Only part-time in retail, but I hope to dazzle them with my mad skills and get a full time position when it becomes available.  Because it is supervisory position I had to have specific training that was only available in a store in New Jersey.  As the crow flies it was only 16 miles from Manhattan, but as a New Jersey transit buses go it was almost two hours EACH way.

  My first day I had to be there by 8:00 a.m., which meant I needed to leave the house by 5:30 a.m. to catch the subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.  When you go to Penn Station to catch a train there is a giant board that give destinations,, departure times, and gates, not so at the bus station.  I had to wait for the ticket booth to open, (only one window opened at 6 a.m) pray that the long line went quickly to ask an agent what my gate was, and make a mad dash for it.

  For the first couple of days I wondered why so many Hispanic workers were leaving the city to go to New Jersey for work.  I day or so later I had an "ah, ha" moment and realized that they were workers going home after a graveyard shift. The late afternoon bus back to the city had the same people heading into the city to begin that shift.

  On all the movies they show the view of Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights, but I found out that the real view is from the New Jersey side.  After coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel the bus would wind it's way through Jersey City dropping off it's weary passengers on their sleepy walks through their neighborhoods revealing the wonderful view of Manhattan from the The World Trade Tower being resurrected to the south, the Chelsea Peers protruding into the Hudson, and the Trump Residential Towers marking the Upper West Side.  I've heard that you can see Time Square from space and I used to wonder about that.  But from the Jersey side I had a view of the West Side of Manhattan.  There was a strange neon flashing coming from the core of  midtown west. Because it was from a distance I wasn't sure what it was at first, but then when I realized how far I was away from the city I was stunned by the intensity of the light.

  Once  I reached my destination in Westwood I was let off into a sleepy little downtown quietly waking up.  Yellow school buses kept traffic paced, shop keepers began to open up their doors, and commuter trains whistled through intersections. I would stop at Goldberg's Bagels to grab a cup of coffee and walk the two baby sized blocks to the boutique for work.  Everything there seemed normal, yet so strange after not leaving Manhattan for seven months.  The two story buildings revealed the sky above without having to crane my neck, no WALK signs were needed to cross the street, and there was literally no one on the sidewalk and it was 9:00 a.m.  Relaxing and a little lonely at the same time.

  Every bus ride I would sit down behind the driver and put my bag in the seat next to me to keep anyone from sitting next to me.  The bus was never full so don't think I'm a total jerk, but with two hours ahead of me the last thing I wanted was to have to make conversation with someone.

  A variety of characters rode this bus.  There was the snoring man who got on in Manhattan and snored his way for two hours to Westwood, the woman who boarded with her two preschool sons for a local ride to spend the entire 15 minutes on the bus telling them (loudly) that only adults were allowed to push the button to request a stop, and the Asian teenager who argued on her cell phone in Chinese with her mother only to call her friend to tell her (and everyone else on the bus) in English everything her mother had said.

  After four days on the bus I was on my way back to the city on Friday afternoon. (I had Wednesday off, if you I wondering how I got four out of five day week).   I wasn't really tired and riding in the seat behind the driver gives a limited view, so I decided to be bold and sit in the very front seat across from the driver.  I put my purse next to me and hoped that I could enjoy the ride home enjoying the view.  I don't even think we had been on the bus for 10 minutes before a young man  asked if he could sit next to me. After sitting down he asked the driver "What time are we scheduled to get into Manhattan?" Ugh.. I was going to have a seatmate all the way into the city.

  At first all he did was play Temple Run on his Ipod, which was irritating because he had the volume up and there was the annoying sound of chattering monkeys every time he lost (which seemed to be quite often).  Out of nowhere he said "You know you look like that mom from that 1990's show "Growing Pains", Joanna Kerns."  It was a strange comment, but I took it as a compliment.  He then began to ask me why I was going into Manhattan.  Needless to say I had to return the question.  What a mistake.  I had an hour and a half of him telling me about his eBay sales of limited addition tennis shoes.  He also had photos on his phone of all the shoes in his inventory along with stories on how he obtained the shoes through conventions, standing in long lines for releases, and trading with private dealers. When the traffic into the Lincoln Tunnel was nothing more than a parking lot due to a stalled car in the tunnel I wanted to tell him that I'd been up since 5:30 and I just wanted to take a nap, but he would interject just enough questions to keep it a conversation instead of a monologue so I didn't have the heart to say anything.

  If nothing else my hair and my face can't take the commute.  The hair and make-up that looks good at 5:30 a.m. in my apartment has transformed to bed-head after falling asleep against a foggy bus window and the 9:00 a.m. face is completely different than the pre-dawn face that I made-up hours before. Thank goodness my training is over and my real commute is only three blocks away from my apartment, but I actually learned more than I ever imagined about commuting and those who are brave enough to do it.