A Strange Commute...

I had a rather interesting journey home last night that was noteworthy enough to justify my return to blog entries after my month long hiatus. My tale begins with me spending yet another day working for the man. I've been quite a bit busier recently, so I was actually working just after four o'clock when I got a call from my lovely wife that our two volleyball matches for the night (one at 6:30 and one at 7:30) were canceled. It wasn't too surprising as we had already had a strong storm roll through Arlington complete with close lightning strikes and even a brief power outage. I moseyed down to the metro at my normal time of around 5:15, thankful that I didn't have to go outside in the pouring rain. After passing by the "Escalator Modernization Project" at Clarendon which is apparently an excuse for Metro to rebuild an escalator from scratch, I noticed my first sign that something might be amiss. A train had just let out, as I could see the people streaming up the escalator, but the platform was still extremely full for the Clarendon station. A new train was arriving as I made it to the crowded platform, but luckily I'm pretty adept at metro "sardining," so I was able to squeeze into a car after making a last second decision to avoid the car with parents with two giant strollers. My second clue that this was going to be a strange commute was that the driver soon said "this is the Orange line to East Falls Church." Since I live and park at Vienna, that was going to be a problem. Eventually, I learned that a power line was down between the East and West Falls Church stations, and that Metro was providing a shuttle bus between East and West Falls Church as an alternative. Unfortunately, simple math told me that the metro station would get backed up pretty quickly unless they provided 8-10 buses every five minutes. Did I say backed up? I meant it would turn into a human parking lot.

At about the time I joined the human parking lot I got a call from Sarah. The powers that be un-canceled the volleyball matches, and we were back on. Using my secret talent of being freakishly tall, I was able to see about 1,000 people in a giant mass waiting for the buses. Then, I had a great idea: Trassie lives right next to the East Falls Church station.

What are the chances that I could hang out there or even get a ride to the next Metro stop from Trassie? What's the chance that Cassie got off work early because of the impending storm? What's the chance that I could actually make a phone call because all the people stuck were jamming up cellphone service? Luckily everything fell into place. Cassie was home early from work, had access to a car, and was reasonably sober. After some strategic maneuvering and fence jumping, I was on my way to my personal shuttle...the Mini Cooper. Cassie and I made a fairly quick jaunt to the West Falls Church metro, while Cassie got a good lesson in driving during rush hour when they were a lot of annoyed people on the road. When I finally made it to the train at the West Falls Church station, I had to keep my smile to myself as the other passengers traded war stories of their 3+ hours commute (little did they know of the free Mini shuttle).

I finally got in touch with Sarah as I was driving back home to find that our 6:30 game was off (which I just heard about from Colleen) because the other team couldn't make it in time, but that as far as she knew the 7:30 game was still on. I changed into volleyball gear, grabbed a drink and some snacks and was back on the road in about four minutes flat. It was still raining hard in Vienna, but by the time I got to Chantilly the sky actually looked pretty clear. I pulled into the Dulles Sportplex lot at about 7:20 and headed down to the court.

Can you guess what happens next? Well, first off there is only one other team at any of the three courts (and even they are a player short). I don't think we were scheduled to play them tonight, but we've had so many games canceled, we probably needed to play them anyway. We agree to their proposal to scrimmage to get at least some volleyball in for all our trouble. Once the score is 4-2, a few hard and quick rain drops come down. We all head to leave but then it stops and Bruce convinces us to play on as he can see a sliver of light through the clouds that appears to be coming closer. On the next serve, the heavens open up. It was one of the those rains where you are already soaked in the three seconds in takes to open your umbrella. We give up and decide to head home. The drive home wasn't awful but very slow amongst the giant puddles and many tornado warnings on the radio. I arrived home and figured that I got two things out of the three hours of commuting I'd just finished. Ten minutes of volleyball (that by the end of the season will probably have cost me about $30) and a story to write about. Hope you enjoyed the story :)