Chris McNerney, Production Assistant

Wednesday August 8th, I woke up at 7:20 a.m. EDT, imagining another entirely too regular commute from my home in Brooklyn, N.Y., to my work in Secaucus, N.J. By 10:10 a.m. I had finally arrived in front of MSNBC. Sitting at my desk at 3:10, I was fully prepared to admit that sometimes commutes do not go as we plan.

But for the cause of this I should backtrack a bit from my desk back to my bed, around five o’clock in the morning, half awake because of the heat (see my previous blog), when the pop-crackle of lightning jerked me up from my bed.

My first thought was for my books underneath my open window - because I like my books and I have a lot of them piled below my window. Then I thought of all the lightning-related injury video I have watched since starting at Weather Plus.

Fact: lighting is one of the leading causes of weather related death in the USA.

But when I saw my dry books and closed my wet window, I fell back to my covers, only a bit aware that the rain outside was filling up the subway tracks below. I was tired - and besides, lightning can’t hit you in your covers (lightning safety facts are gibberish when you’re asleep).

But then I woke up. Soon I was standing outside the flooded subway station with angry would-be commuters who could not commute. Soon I was one of them.

It’s a story repeated over and over throughout the city. Some had it worse than I. But I don’t care much about them. I had it bad!

Later, sitting on the bus arm to arm with my fellow passengers, I contemplated the new direction my commute was taking. The clock struck 8:00. Then it struck 9:00. I read my book on the 17th century English countryside. It had flooded then too.

Later, the Marcy JMZ stop was packed to the point we had to stand long in line just to have a chance to pay the subway fare. It was packed to the point there were just as many people walking away from the subway hopeless in disgust, as there were people walking up to the subway hoping the station was not really as full as all that. After all, we thought, the JMZ is elevated, and it is hard for an elevated train to flood (I hear Time Square was busier, even, than that. It was actually flooded).

No matter, the JMZ station was full. And the trains were so slow. And there were not many of them clunking along. It was an alphabet before me…J trains and Z trains running the rails ‘til finally I got myself on an M.

I was city bound then… Ugg…there would be still more travail. But for the moment, I was again looking to my fellow commuters and I felt a bond. We were packed, but as delayed commuters go, we were happy because we moved.

In Manhattan, I had to transfer trains. We all know, the JMZ trains do not really go anywhere you really want to go (I stand by this statement). So I switched to the R line.

Someone told me the R train was now running. So of course the R train in the R tunnel was stopped with the doors closed like it had a do not enter sign.

Before I bore you, what happened next in my epic adventure was quickly thus: I followed the signs. En mass my fellow delayed commuters and I walked through the dark and drippy tunnel, up waterfall stairs, past a stream.

But what was that rubble in the distance?

A cave in? A giant rat?

No - another group of equally bewildered commuters…an even bigger group…walking our way. There was no space in the tunnel for the both of us. But an MTA subway conductor led them. He said he would open the R train and take us uptown. With trepidation I went through the door and sat down on a seat.

Would we drown in these dank tunnels? Would our names be remembered never more?

Only an hour later I was in New Jersey ready to work my weather shift, (I leave my further adventures to the readers fertile imagination), exhausted though my day was just to begin. This was a feeling common the city over.

To all you who have suffered long commutes - I feel for you!

But only so much, because I had it bad!