First I wake up early so I can do a new update. When I check my page, I've got about a hundred more hits than I did the last time I checked it. Cool. Thanks, Miguelito. I will work on my evil overlord skillset.

Then, I get to the train station. I'm walking toward the turnstiles, and a thought hits me. Did I comb my hair? I feel my head. Oh, my god. I walk quick back to the car, look at myself in the window reflection. If I did comb my hair, I also stuck my tongue in a light socket some time between coffee and the comics. Shit.

So I get back in the car, drive back home. Walk into the house to the bedroom and tell Deb she needs to open her eyes when I kiss her goodbye in the morning. She looks at me and says, "Oh my god." Yeah. That's what I said. So I wet my hair, combed it into a style that didn't look so much like I was a member of the Go-Go's, called in late and headed back for the station. Luckily, it's MLK day and the parking lot was only half full.

Then I caught one of the trains with new cars. They've been on the line for about a month, but I never happened to catch one before. Kinda weird. Much more brightly lit, and louder. The old cars have an orange and beige color scheme and incredibly nasty carpet on the floors. These new ones are blue and grey, and feel more like a speeding hospital waiting room. But hey, it's clean and the ride is nice.

Then I get off at my station. The northbound and southbound trains have arrived at the same time. Each is packed with toorists getting off at my station. There's some big convention thing going on, plus some MLK traffic probably (though the parade doesn't start until 1:00 p.m.). We get to the big escalator, and toorists don't know that if you're just going to ride the thing up, you stand on the right and leave the path to the left clear for people to walk up.

With this crowd, though, it would take forever for all the standers to get up, so I'm feeling understanding. I have never seen so many people on this escalator at one time. And understand, this particular escalator is one of the longest in the world. I'm guessing about 120 steps at least. When I walk up it in the morning, I can climb 75 steps if I'm going at a pretty good clip. So I figure it eats about 40 in lift as I'm going up. My estimate could be way off. It could eat as many as 60 or 70. Who knows. I'm not going to stand at the bottom and try to count.

So there's more than 200 people on the escalator at one time. I get about halfway up, and it grinds to a halt. Everybody groans, but no one is really surprised. Then it STARTS TO SLIDE BACK DOWN. Not too far, just a foot or so, but the murmur from the masses is a little more fearful. My brain flashes to the big escalator fire in London (?) that killed about 60 people. Sure, this escalator does not have wooded steps. My mind didn't stay there long. But you just don't know if someone is going to panic or not.

Let me emphasize again that this thing is really, really tall. Some people can't use it because they get vertigo.

People on my section of the esc start yelling to the people above to start climbing. Eventually they do, and up we all shuffle. Safe and sound.

But I had such an adrenaline rush from that. Probably because I read books like "The Circus Fire" (excellent) about people panicking in tight spaces and trampling each other. Naturally, I took an immediate cig and coffee break after dropping my crap off at the office.

Better now. But a strange way to start the day.

Moving on - 12:11 p.m. , 2007-08-14

Where the hell have I been? - 12:10 p.m. , 2007-02-19

Holy shit! - 2:24 p.m. , 2006-01-11

Stuffing recipe - 6:17 p.m. , 2005-12-13

Good Life Update - 10:22 a.m. , 2005-11-11