The Coldest Week of January

It's the week of President Obama's second inauguration. Form the accounts of my colleague who has been to the last three such quadrennial events, this one by far had the best weather. No rain, no snow, no freezing temperatures. All and all a very pleasant day. But then when that Monday was over the weather abruptly changed.

 Tuesday started out with a 24 degree morning and late MARC trains. I was fortunate to be waiting on my normal 8:00 train when the delayed 7:35 train arrived and I took the bird-in-hand approach and got to work a few minutes early without having to wait on a frozen platform. An acquaintance of mine flew in from Arizona to be in DC for the Inauguration and was planning to stay through Wednesday morning. We made plans to meet at Union Station when I got off from work. After waiting until a few minutes after 5 pm, I figured that the connection was not going to happen and I went for the train. While sitting in my usually spot, I sent out a text message that I thought we missed connections. She responded that she was across from Ben & Jerry's inside the station. We each had been waiting on opposite sides of the wall, so to speak. I got off the train with the instruction to my commuting buddies that I would probably not be back, if I wasn't back in a bout 10 minutes.

All along the platform I had to quickly explain to people I knew and the three Conductors, that nothing was wrong, I was going to meet a friend. I do have to say that me leaving the train and moving against the main flow of commuters right before departure time was just a bit odd. My friends on the train defended my seating position against all potential takers until the train moved and I was not there. She and I had a great visit until the 6:40 train back to BWI was imminent. She was going back to the airport area where her hotel room was. So we were traveling together on the train afterwards. Wednesday remained really cold with a bit of snow. My boss suggested working from home and avoiding the problems of getting in to the office in DC. I could find no reason to NOT do that so I worked from home. It was a good thing too because there were a cluster of train malfunctions that delayed morning trains.

Thursday became a work from home day again. And again six of the morning trains were impacted by delays. Two evening trains including my usual 5:20 departure were held up due to signal/switch troubles at Landsdown. After working from home for two days I decided to make the trek into DC for the day. MARC had other plans. One of their trains snagged the catenary and pulled part of it down. In short, no southbound trains for hours. Passengers on the stalled train must transfer to the next train that backed up to switch tracks and come around it. For me that meant the trains that did arrive would be on the middle track at BWI which has no platform. And we are expecting snow again in the afternoon. Some people did not have much flexibility in their work. While preparing to leave I spoke with a coupe of people I know and a few I had only just seen on the train. I facilitated information sharing to form up two ad hoc car pools of four people. My decision was to return home and get warmed up. Then I did.