Surprisingly one of the easiest adjustments I made was learning to live without a car. People ask if it is difficult to get places, if I miss the freedom of driving, if I feel trapped in the city with no easy manner for escape? No, not really. Like many others I loathed the daily struggle with traffic each day. I would scream and laugh and inch my way forward and arrive at work pissed off at the whole city. I was never one to anticipate a drive, my wife and I almost begging each other to take the wheel on trips of varying distance. A quick pop in to the dry cleaners or the grocery store or the increasingly rare trips to the gym were ok, but any hint of traffic jams or monotonous highway driving were sure to ruin a pleasant mood.
Living in the country's largest triumph of public transportation has been spoiling, to say the least. Each morning I stand amongst the flood of workers, peering down subway tunnels as we wait and pushing our way into cramped quarters. Arms are intermixed like a game of twister in the morning commute, feeling out poles and doors for a place to steady oneself. And despite how uncormfortable this could be it is unbothering. Each day I sit or stand with a book in tow and attempt to lose myself in the fiction. Between Peter Mayle and Richard Russo and the host of authors I have been reading lately there has been little chance to pause for worry. The time passes by and in about the same time as my previous commute I arrive, close up my book and start the day. Evenings are about the same, with heavy doses of people watching mixed in for good measure.
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