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Long Island-Westchester Supertrip Report


WestSideJeff

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I'm leaving NYC next month, so as my way of saying "au revoir" (and to break a bad oversleeping habit), I took a ride from Manhattan out to Suffolk, up to Westchester, and back, last Wednesday.

 

At 7:50am, I left the house (just in time to score a free coffee at McDonald's.

By 8:05, the Sausage McMuffins had been eaten, and I swiped my Metrocard for the third time (third time's a charm), and got on the downtown (1) at 96th Street.

 

At 8:12, I got off the (1) at 59th/Columbus Circle, walked down 57th Street to the (F) train, just in time to miss a Queens bound. I didn't even try going against the crowd to get to the platform.

 

8:25, a nearly empty (F) train pulled in - R32, plenty of seats, just the way I like it.

 

At 8:52, I got off at 169th Street, over 40 minutes early. I was going to take the 9:35 N6 to Hempstead, then the N72 to Babylon to hook up with the S23 (which required precision timing since it only runs every hour), but my too-good timing demanded an on-the-fly reroute.

Reroute! The N22 to Roosevelt Field pulled up in front of the Ramada (who needs a Ramada hotel on Hillside Ave??) at 9:05, and I jumped on, with a slightly new route in mind.

 

Just after 10, the N22 pulled into Roosevelt Field, just as an N15 sat waiting to go in service, and a Hempstead-bound N16 sat boarding passengers. I ran over to the N16, jumped over two concrete curbs (after checking the schedules) and made it, just in the nick of time! Before we continued sitting for another couple of minutes. After that, we meandered through miles of Long Island sprawl, and the eerie, nearly empty Nassau Community College campus, before rolling into Hempstead at 10:33.

 

I read and used the facilities at the LIRR station (the Hempstead bus station has all the charm of a crowded subway station without the benefit of a subway running every 8 minutes), and crossed the street in time for the 11am N54 to Amityville.

 

I asked for a transfer for the Suffolk Transit bus, took a seat, and marveled at how well I was holding up despite a lack of sleep.

Bus got to Amityville at 11:53, and the next S1 wasn't until 12:15, so I settled in to read yet again.

 

At 12:15, the S1 pulled up, promptly, with Roger Toussaint's third cousin removed behind the wheel. Before I could get a good whiff of that new bus smell, Rog barked, "No good! We don't take this!," and claimed that they'd never taken LI Bus transfers. :mad: So, I dropped the transfer in the little trash bucket, walked off the bus, and took the 12:20 Babylon line back to Jamaica.

 

But the trip wasn't over yet...

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