I love the New York City subway system. Sure, it has its faults as any public transit system would, but it’s really hard to hate it given that it runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and you can rely on it to get to most places throughout the four boroughs (sorry, Staten Island). Because of the New York City subway system, I have had zero reason to drive for the last seventeen years, so that makes me super, duper happy!

But then there come the times when the subway does, in fact, malfunction, and you are left wondering to yourself, what the fuck is actually going on here, and how did a 13-minute subway ride become a two-hour commuting nightmare? The last three days, there have been power outages, likely due to high heat/hot weather, at the West 4th Street station. This has meant that all trains going through it, so the A, C, E, B, D, F, and M trains, have been negatively impacted. It took Chris multiple line changes and walking to different stops to get home today from dropping Kaia off at summer camp — a total of two hours of commuting time.

I was cognizant of this when I went to pick her up later in the day. I went into the Columbus Circle subway station and checked the times. The status board said it would take about five minutes for the next B/D train to arrive. It ended up taking longer than that, plus a stall right before West 4th Street. I still arrived at her school at about the same time I usually do for pickup. Unfortunately, she was not there when I came, though. The teacher at the school answered the door to let me know that the bus was stuck in traffic. Several classes had gone on a farm field trip to Melville out in Long Island, including Kaia’s. They left early given the rain/flood warnings this afternoon, but due to multiple unanticipated road closures, they were running behind. The bus was not expected to be back for another thirty-plus minutes.

Of course I was annoyed, but it was out of their control even when they intentionally left the farm early, and nothing else could be done. So I walked around for a bit and popped into a bakery a few blocks away to pick up a pork floss onigiri for Kaia, as I knew she’d be hungry given we’d be late for our usual dinner time at home. I stopped by a tamal shop I noticed a couple months ago when I walked by it to pick up some horchata for myself to stay hydrated, plus two tamales to go. It made me realize that while I’ve spent the last year really exploring Chinatown deeply, I have really neglected the Lower East Side. It’s right next to Chinatown, and it also has endless delicious things to check out. So I made a mental note to self on this.

The bus finally came at around the time the teacher estimated. I told Kaia we had to take a different train at a different stop to get home, and this would necessitate more walking. She did perfectly fine when we went to Canal and took the yellow trains home. But I knew she’d eventually whine and whinge on the walk from the 57th Street yellow train stop to home given it was more after-school walking than she was used to. She happily nibbled her onigiri during the entire subway ride uptown.

We didn’t get home until past 6:30 when we usually get home from school between 5:30-5:45. But in the end, we got her fed, showered, read to, and sleeping. It was definitely tiring, but it definitely made our after-school routine a bit more exciting for Kaia, as it wasn’t as predictable. Plus, we both got extra steps in!