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[personal profile] eclectic_boy
...the concert was very nice.

Tonight was a Swat alumni event, a classical concert at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Kimmel Center, with a talk by Tom Whitman beforehand. He had asked me to bring a boombox so he could have musical samples with his lecture, so I borrowed one (thanks, Blake!) and took it with me on the train. Tom was coming in from his NW Phila home so could neither offer me a lift nor ride in on the train with me. Thank God, it turned out.
About half an hour before my 5:54 train I turned on KYW and head that there were wires down, causing up to 30 minute delays on all train lines. Yikes! Since there's a SEPTA bus strike, there was no alternative way for me to get into town. Also, I had no way to reach Tom besides email, but I called the PCMS to tell them I might be late and they might have a leaderless and clueless group on their hands. And I sped to the station, hoping I could catch a late 5:13 train. Alas, it hadn't been late. And in fact I began thinking the problem was over (KYW's often behind the times in their transit reporting) since the 5:54 arrived less than 10 minutes late.
We lost only another couple of minutes heading in. I realized that to meet Tom at 6:40 like we'd planned, I'd be taking a taxi. When the train got to UniverCity I stayed on it because I don't think there are often taxis there. Mistake! The train took an hour to get to the next station, 30th St. I was off the train at 7:40, and unable to get a cab at 30th St either -- there was a line 100 people long at the taxi stand! So I hoofed it, finally getting a taxi to take me the last seven blocks, such that I arrived at 7:59. The lecture was over but I got to hear the whole concert[*].
And it turned out everything had worked flawlessly without me! PCMS had gotten Tom (and all the alums) to a lecture room, provided him with their own boombox, and given out tickets that they'd printed out after I told them I was going to be late with their tickets. I never want to have something like that happen again (though I'm not sure what I could have done about it given the situation and when I found out about it), but as Experiences go it wasn't particularly painful. Just frustrating.



[*] Beethoven String Trio op.9 #2, Berg Lyric Suite, Dvorak Sextet, played by musicians from Marlboro.

Date: 2005-11-04 06:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] saxifrage.livejournal.com
ack, that sounds awful! I had no idea pubtrans in Philly was so bad right now. *hugs*

Date: 2005-11-04 11:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] reldnahkram.livejournal.com
Regional Rail had a massive meltdown yesterday. Power problems in the heart of the system backed things up, and it progressively got worse with no way to move trains into place to pick up people who had been waiting for a while.

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