Vacation in the Big Apple

Last August I wrote about the trip that my friend Becky and I took to watch the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament in New York City. You can read that story here. Having gone with Becky last year and surviving (although not without adventure), Steve and I decided to attempt the same journey this year by ourselves. Of course, a vacation without some type of drama usually doesn't happen to us and this one didn't disappoint.

 

We started out on a Thursday morning and drove to the Lancaster Train Station. We left our car there and took the train into Penn Station in New York City. From there we walked to the Subway, bought two Metro Cards (one for each of us), found and boarded the E Train, transferred to the 7 Train, disembarked in Flushing, walked to our motel and checked in. We did all this without incident. We were feeling pretty accomplished and proud.

We settled into our motel and then prepared to go to the Tennis Center for the evening session of tennis. We would need to take the Subway just one stop back to Met-Willets Point which was within walking distance of the U.S. Open.  A Subway ride cost $2.50 per person. We had purchased two $10.00 Metro Cards and used each one time. We decided to leave one of them in the room and just take the other as we thought we would only need $5.00 to get back and forth. (Really, we would need $10.00 because we would need to pay $5.00 for the return trip but we didn't think that far.)

 

We walked to the Subway and approached the turn style. Steve swiped the Metro Card and I walked through. He then swiped the card again for himself but the turn style remained locked and he got a message that said "swipe again." He tried two more times and got the same message. When he tried again, the message said, "insufficient funds." After being denied repeatedly, he decided his only option was to buy another card. He went over to the Metro machine (kind of like an ATM) and bought a $20.00 card. This new card worked and he joined me (I had been waiting and watching the fiasco from the other side of the turn style) and together we went to watch some tennis.

 

After the tennis was over for the evening, we walked back to the Subway. The majority of the crowd was boarding the trains that were headed into Manhattan, so the corridor to the Flushing train was practically empty. Three teenage boys ran down the hall and simply jumped over the turn style without using a Metro Card. Interesting. Didn't anyone watch and monitor the turn styles? Surely there were security cameras that caught everything. Steve swiped the card and I walked through. He swiped it for himself but was denied entrance again. By this time, we were both disgusted. Steve decided if those young guys could jump over, so could he. There was no one else around, so he tried to leap over the turn style. That was a bad decision. As I watched with horror, he got one leg over but the other one did not follow. I was certain he was going to fall headfirst to the floor and I would be calling 911. He managed to catch himself on the sides and prevent himself from falling. After failing with that, he resorted to crawling through. Well, Steve is a big man and the space was pretty small. I will just say that if it was caught on camera, I'm sure the viewer was highly entertained. However, he made it and no one stopped us so we boarded the Subway and rode it back to Flushing and our motel.

 

To make a long story short, I will just say that whenever we used the Metro Card(s) we had problems. The story was always the same. Steve would  swipe the card for me and I would go through but when he swiped the card for himself he would be denied. We figured we were wasting a lot of money because it seemed like although it was denying Steve entrance, it was deducting money off the card. Needless to say, he got pretty good at crawling through the turn style!

 

Finally, on Saturday evening when we came back from the tennis center and exited the Subway in Flushing, we decided to go to the booth and ask a live person for help. We showed the man our three cards and asked him to tell us how much was on each card. It turned out that if he combined the three cards and put the money on one card, we would have a total of $6.85. We only needed $5.00 for one final Subway ride the next morning since we were heading home, so we told him to go ahead. We went back to the hotel thinking that our problem was solved and we would be able to use the card in the morning for the last time and leave the frustration behind. We should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

 

When we got to the Subway station in the morning, Steve took the Metro card from his wallet, swiped it and I went through. He swiped it again and was denied. We were so angry. I told him to hand his carry-on luggage over to me and I would go over to my usual spot and wait for him with our bags while he went for help. The lady was helpful enough and after trying it again several times, she deducted the $2.50 from the card and opened the wheelchair access door for Steve to walk through. We were so happy to leave that place behind. We boarded the train and sank into the seats. As the subway pulled away from the station, I said to Steve, "Do you have everything? Your phone? Your glasses? Your wallet?" His face got pale and he said, "I don't have my wallet." With sinking hearts, we got off at the next station and went back, but to no avail. The wallet was gone. We think he either dropped it when he handed his luggage over to me, or else when he went for help he left it on the ledge of the booth. Fortunately, the lady was kind enough to open the wheelchair access gate again, so we didn't have to purchase another Metro Card. I think we both would have sat down and cried if they had required us to do that.

 

In the end, we survived and besides the Metro Card debacle, we had a great vacation. Once we got over the shock, and looked at everything clearly, we realized it could have been a lot worse. Steve only had $21.00 in cash in the wallet and two credit cards and his license. We stopped the credit cards immediately and last Thursday he went to the Driver's License Center and replaced his license. The loss he felt most deeply was that of the actual wallet. It was my dad's old wallet and he said he had never had a wallet that felt so good in his pocket and that didn't wear down the cards causing him to have to replace them often. In the end, he found a new one at K-Mart that was very similar to the lost one so hopefully it will serve him well.

So ends another trip to the big city. I'm not sure why we had such a difficult time with the Metro Cards. We will have to ask some experienced New Yorkers what the problem might have been. Maybe country folks like us just aren't cut out to maneuver around the city. In any event, we will see if we will return next year for Round Three.