remind me to just stay home next year

Today was the New York City Marathon. The race starts in Staten Island, then crosses the Verrazano Bridge where it cuts straight through our neighborhood. The necessary street closures require everyone to plan ahead when deciding where to park their cars or, as in our case, how they'll maneuver the alternate routes on public transportation.

I braced myself accordingly for a longer commute to church. Luckily, Blake's bishopric meeting, which had originally been scheduled for 8:00, got canceled at the last minute, so he was available to help me get the boys to church. We both had to be there at 9:00 for Ward Council, so we left the house at 8:10 to account for the extra couple blocks we'd have to walk to catch the bus.

Upon arrival at the bus stop, a block beyond the street designated for the marathon, we learn that instead of being able to catch our bus here, we'd have to walk an additional eight long avenues to where we could pick it up. With two little boys, no stroller, and a time limit, that just wasn't going to happen. So we turned around and back track a few blocks to catch the train.

We hop on a Manhattan-bound R train at 77th Street and, at 36th Street, transfer to a Coney Island bound D train. The D train would take us to within a few steps of the church, so as long as there were no major delays, we could still maybe get to our meeting on time.

But of course there were delays, or, rather, service changes on the D line which called for all Coney Island bound D trains to travel on the parallel N line. Which for our trip meant that we had to do some back tracking and then ultimately get off at Avenue U, a good 10 minute walk from the church.

You do what you have to do, so we sucked it up and did our best to take the service changes in stride. (But let me tell you, I was thisclose about two dozen times to just turning around and going home. Ask Blake; he'll tell you.) We finally arrived at the church at 9:30, halfway through Ward Council. Blake and I were exhausted, Garrett was wired, and Caleb was starving. In short, we made it, but we were a mess.

So let me just state here in writing so that I don't forget next year when the day of the New York City Marathon rolls around again: Just Stay Home. Stay home and watch the marathoners run through your neighborhood. Your sanity will thank you later.

(Okay, so that's probably just all talk. You know me -- I'll be at church. Because in case anyone is curious, the trip home did go slightly better, thank heavens. It still took a long time, but it wasn't as riddled with rotten luck as our earlier trip had been. It was a long, hard day, though, for reasons beyond our frustrating trip to church, reasons too many to count and complain about here, and I'm so glad that it's over.)