Good ol' New Jersey Transit

Yesterday's commute was an 'interesting' one. I left work about 5 minutes before 5:00pm so I could try to catch the 5:18pm train. I usually can't make this train and typically have to take the 5:50pm train instead. I jumped off the subway at Penn Station and began my sprint to the New Jersey transit area. I had about 2 or 3 minutes to make it to my train. I was running through Penn Station and as I finally approached the NJ Transit area it was packed with people. I didn't know what was going on but started to push people out of the way until I looked up at the board to see what gate my train was leaving from and saw that all the trains were listed as 'delayed'. Well, that's never a good thing. I walked through to the gate where my train typically leaves from and heard the announcement saying NJ Transit was temporarily suspended due to overhead power problems. GREAT was my first thought. I called Dan to consult him on what I should do. I had two options: go to Hoboken via the PATH and then take a transit train or go to Newark via the PATH and have Dan pick me up. Needless to say, I went for the latter. Trying to get out of Penn Station was insane, walking down the street to get to the PATH station was insane and the craziest part was the 50 million people trying to cram down the little entrance to the PATH station. A lady I was walking with was very helpful and knew where she was going so I followed her. It turns out the back up was due to police officers regulating the amount of people that could get onto the platform to get to the next train (pretty smart really so no one could get pushed onto the tracks or something). After a long PATH ride of being squeezed in like sardines, I finally arrived at Penn Station. Now the trick was to find Dan! I walked out of Penn Station, found a not so busy intersection and waited. Traffic was insane and of course while I was waiting the skies opened up and the torrential downpour insued. Luckily I happened to pick a street that had a pedestrian bridge over it so I had even better cover than my umbrella. Dan finally arrived and I think we made it home around 7:30pm. Talk about being exhausted!! And thank goodness Dan was around to come pick me up! I hope this sort of thing doesn't happen again but at least now I know exactly what I can do or where I need to go! Lesson learned ;-)