Since Sedona enjoyed maxsmart's story of his odyssey yesterday, I'll contribute mine.

At around 3:20, less than an hour before the lights went out, I had left a midtown hotel and the arms of a lovely lady known to some of the New York members of TER. It had been an amazing extended hour even though it was our first time together - so much so that my parting kiss, after I'd showered, was to moist places other than her lips - and lasted several minutes. (If she's reading, she knows who she is - and now what my handle is!)

Anyway, still basking in a pleasant afterglow, I had stopped for a quick drink before heading back to New Jersey and home when . . . .

Over the next half hour, as people spilled out onto the sidewalks, rumors and speculations spread, people hovered by stopped cars with their radios on, the magnitude of the outage gradually became known, I tried to formulate a plan for getting back to Jersey. No trains under the Hudson, no buses as the Port Authority bus terminal was closed and no traffic was moving in midtown anyway.

Foresaking thoughts of getting a ferry from midtown, I began walking south along 7th Avenue among the crowds in the street, crowds which covered the entire street by Penn Station where there was no way in, punching buttons on the cellphone trying to make contact with someone - anyone. Around 20th Street, a crowd was milling in front of the sidewalk cafe of a small Italian restaurant. The proprietor had brought out tubs of gelato and was scooping it into cups, giving them away. Grabbing one, thanking him, continuing south, I finally did get a call through to home. Seems that the area of New Jersey where I live was one of the few scattred islands of normality where the power never went out - not even a blip - my son told me that his computer never even rebooted! But how to get there???

Further south, in the Village, I passed the studio of another lady well-known around the the TER New York board. Rang her bell - after all, these were not normal times - really, was only looking for a little talk and a cold drink - but she was not in. Ah well. Continued south, with the thought that the ferries from the World Financial Center might be usable with less that a 6-to-8 hour wait. Passed the twelve blocks of stopped traffic leading back from the Holland Tunnel.

A few blocks north of what non-New Yorkers still refer to as Ground Zero (the phrase has rather lost its cachet around here), I felt a desperate need to "go." Passing an Irish pub, with crowds milling on the sidewalk in front commiserating, I squeezed my way in and asked the bartender two questions: Is the beer still cold and can I find my way to the men's room in the dark? Receiving an affirmative reply to both, I ordered a Coors and managed to find my way down the stairs, dimly lit by an emergency light, to a small john even more dimly lit by a candle. Back upstairs, had a nice chat with one of the regulars - he swears that this place has the coldest beer downtown - they keep it buried in ice in galvanized metal washtubs behind the bar. Very refreshing!

Finally reaching the WFC, found that the ferry lines there were only a few thousand people long, not the tens-of-thousands uptown. But with fewer boats, it would still be a matter of hours. Finding no appeal to just standing on line, I continued to walk south - for no real reason other than that I had already walked nearly 4 miles down the isle of Manhattan and the Battery, the southern tip, was only a little further on. Maybe it was a homing instinct - having grown up in Staten Island and commuting to college on the Staten Island Ferry - but of course, the SI Ferry would not be running, since its docks are electrically operated, unlike the Hudson River ferries which just tie up to the dock.

As I passed the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel I saw that it was open and that a steady stream of express busses to Staten Island was entering. Eureka! A way home - all I had to do was find a bus with some room and get another call through on the cell to get the wife to pick me up in Staten Island. And so it came to pass that at about 8:30 p.m., five hours after the glow and four hours after beginning the trek, I found myself back to home and hearth.

To tie all of this to the beginning of this thread - if there is a baby boom 9 months from now, I will not have made a contribution. Not from the afternoon, for obvious reasons; and not from the evening, because mine is one of those marriages which are the subject of the mega-thread below (though I have not found myself moved to contribute to it). And besides - in her little corner of the world, the lights never went off - just another day in suburbia.

My one regret is that my afternoon rendezvous did not begin an hour later than it did!


(Sedona - sorry, but you might need to dig out an NYC map to fully appreciate the journey)