P.S. to Part 5

I just needed to add on a couple of things to MJ's most recent post (Part 5 of our trip to NYC & VT). So this will be short. If you haven't read her post, this won't make any sense to you. But it's important for you to know about these, so you can see just how ridiculous and hopeless I am.

The morning we left NYC for Vermont, I decided to travel in comfort, and wore a flimsy black skirt. We loaded ourselves down with suitcases and walked a few blocks to the subway station. It was kind of a breezy morning. I was following MJ & KT into a large intersection. This is when I learned a very important lesson about NYC:

Large intersections in NYC tend to be very breezy, so keep a hand free to hold your skirt down.

Of course, my hands were full of stuff, and so I was totally helpless when my skirt completely blew up, exposing my undies to the entire busy intersection. Great. This would only happen to me. I think approximately 563 people knew what kind of underwear I had on that day. Awesome.

Then we went down to the subway, where I learned another important lesson about traveling in NYC:

If you are carrying a suitcase on wheels through the subway turnstyle, PICK IT UP before you go through.

Still following MJ & KT, we got our subway cards and started to lug ourselves and our stuff through the turnstyles. MJ went through. KT went through. I got stuck. Somehow, I managed to get the handle of my suitcase wrapped around the turnstyle bar. Which was not moving, because I'd already swiped my ticket. And since we had all bought single-ride tickets, my ticket was now useless -- I'd already swiped it. I couldn't just hop back over the turnstyle and buy a new ticket, either--the turnstyles are very tall and designed to prevent people from jumping over them. I was in limbo -- neither forward nor backward could I go. I began to panic, because it was time to board the train and Rocky was going to shoot us if we were late, and I would be forced to spend the rest of my trip, crying, stuck in the subway turnstyle.

I look up, and MJ and KT have realized what is going on. They are struggling with the subway doors, getting yelled at for holding up the train. "Come on! What's wrong? Hurry up!" they yelled. "I can't ! I'm stuck!" I shouted back. Seeing that I was hopelessly stuck, they gave up, grabbed their stuff and hopped off. KT dropped something right as the doors were closing. That's when a nice lady on the subway tossed it to her right in the nick of time. (It was pretty cool, actually. Kind of like something from a movie. They had one chance and a 2 second moment to do it.)

Somehow, MJ untangled me. I still don't know how she got me unstuck, because I was lodged in there pretty good. She still doesn't know how I managed to get stuck in the first place. Again, something only I would do.

So just remember that turnstyles are not suitcase friendly. Pick up your suitcases, folks. And keep that hand free to hold down your skirt. Unless you're the kind of person who likes flashing busy intersections full of strangers.