A fellow Metro North rider once said that he and a friend had been around the world together. I was caught off guard and asked about their trip. He explained that they rode the train together. He then brought to our attention that living 55 miles outside New York City required that we take the train twice a day (110 miles), five days a week (550 miles), four weeks a month (2,200 miles) for roughly twelve months out of the year (26,400 miles). The circumference of the earth is a little less than that at 24,901.55 miles. That is assuming that you do not take any vacation, but I got the point.
When spending this much time commuting, you start to notice things. There are riders with certain habits that would only come out on a commute such as this one. Some see it as a way to get from point A to point B but it is, in fact, a subculture. A place where for 120 minutes in the morning and 120 minutes in the evening (hopefully without delays), you sit and read, work on a laptop, talk (hopefully text) on your cell phone, have a drink in the bar car, share stories, play cards or close your eyes and snooze after a long day on the job. And so begins our 26,400 mile journey on the Metro North.
