Off the Rails

So I totally got stuck on a train yesterday. For serious. It was at once awful and an interesting experience. Settle in, you're about to hear a story.

I took the train up to White Plains to meet my great friend and former roommate  Carolina. I only get to see her a couple of times a year so I was delighted to get to make the trip. Seeing her is like being home. Anyway, we had a great visit: ate some lunch, shopped around, caught up on everything. Much too soon, the time came when she had to drop me off at the train station to make my way back to Mike's hometown. This is when the trouble starts.

It should be noted that I haven't taken a train ride since the summer and even then was with Mike so I never really had to pay attention. I get on the platform forgetting that the board announces the train's final destination, not the next stop. Like an ass, I hop on the train for North White Plains since that's the next stop I know I have to take. I know this because Mike equipped me with a list of all the stops to White Plains. "The list is reversed when you're coming back home," he says. Duh, I think.

I get on the train heading to North White Plains and what I think is my final destination. I get cozy in a corner with a book and my ipod for the 40 minute trip. Next thing I know, the train is crawling slowly and there is a train really close on my left. I look to my right and see that there is no platform. When I look around me, I see that there are no people and that I'm on a completely empty train. Now, I don't know if you've gathered from reading my blog, but I'm not a calm person. Never have been, never will be. Suffice it to day, I start to freak out. 

My default setting for when things like this happen to me is to call Mike. I dial as I begin to walk up and down the train car not sure which direction to take. When he answers, I let loose: "I'm stuck on the train. There is no one on here. I don't know where I am. aldjfwe&&*#$%#!ouowaielnasldhfoasdhfljhasd." (I started to get incomprehensible towards the end there) But it's not Mike, it's his brother, Andrew, and then our friend, Aaron, telling me to calm down; asking me where I am. "I don't know," I say. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get out of the damn train car. It's locked. I start pressing the emergency button but those bastards don't answer.

Suddenly, I see this guy walking next to the train and I knock on the window. I'm surprised at how calmly I'm knocking given that I just had a Stage 3 freakout (out of 5). He looks at me like he's seen this before. I just tell him I'm from out of town.

When I look around, I'm in the middle of a train yard about three blocks from the North White Plains station where I had to apparently get off and transfer to the express train. I have to take this little path, like I'm walking the yellow brick road, all the way back to the train station. I'm a city girl, born and raised, so I'm not a fan of isolated places surrounded by trees. I know that I don't want to wait in this train stop for the next train that comes in an hour. Eventhough there were people there, I wasn't feeling it AND I still wasn't sure whether this was the right station in the first place.

Luckily, I don't have to wait long. Like a pack of knights those three swooped up in a Honda CRV and saved me. I was a little shaken the rest of the night, maybe a little worse for wear, but I can laugh about it now much to my sister's chagrin. Did I mention that I hate trains?