Not so much a commute as run for the hills but, booked Carmel LAST week to JFK online and then when the strike hit, spent a total of 2 hours on the phone trying to confirm only to get busy signals or their cloyingly polite message which I can now recite by heart. "WELCOME to Carmel..." Got through six hours before the car was due (at 5AM), confimed with the nice man about a dozen times and had a nap. Peeked outdoors with my luggage at the go hour, saw that 96th street was a parking lot of taxis looking for fares, called some more then was informed "We have no car for you".

I hung up, without cursing them out (which I much regret) sprang outside, two cabs swerved away from me when they saw my bags, the third came and we had a spirited shouting match/banter about what the actual flat fare to the airport was, but as the clock was ticking, I took his "offer" of 100 bucks. Which he had to take me to an ATM on 125th to get. In the cab I called my family and told them they better have eggnog and a foot rub waiting. They didn't. Ingrates!

I wouldn't call my commute horrible, but it was definitely tiring and far. I walked from southeast Park Slope to Manhattan, ran into some friends with a car at Grand and Bowery, rode with them up to 21st. Walked from 21st to return some library books at 40th and 5th. Then went down to Kinko's at 20th and Park Ave South and class (the whole point of all of this walking) at 14th and 6th. Spent the night in the village and walked home from 11th and B today (got a little lost and ended up going down Smith Street until President).

my commute has only been about a mile and a half across brooklyn, which is nice, but what is not nice is the state of work for the past 3 days. i work as a high school teacher in the public schools, and since the strike began, i've had a TOTAL of 6 students (i usually see 125+ a day). my school is not a neighborhood one, so students usually make a long treck there from the rockaways, bushwick, bed stuy, etc. the schools are empty and it's ridiculous that the city even held school in many instances. what a waste of time and now kids are going to be screwed for the regents seeing they lost a week of instruction at a crucial point in the school year. not to mention i've been close to stabbing myself in the temple for days because i've been sitting in an empty room for hours on end!

Stayed at work an hour and 45 minutes late to catch a ride with a coworker from MoMA back to Brooklyn. Began Operation Exit Manhattan, which lasted an hour and a half and included, but is not limited to: ten minute wait at Central Parking on 54th; multiple utter traffic standstills surpassing five minutes; angry cabbies laying on horns for extended periods; being cutoff several times, blocking our car and all the cars behind us from an empty street; being sideswiped by cab #2C94 (fucker); stalled car in leftmost lane at 59th. Sailed over Queensboro Bridge. Got lost in LIC several times, took roundabout back roads to Bushwick, arrived home in a cool two hours.

I love the MTA.

A coworker left his house at 4AM to WALK the 15 miles to the warehouse. He made it on time.

I worked from home.

I'm self-employed & work from home. I got up, ate breakfast, and walked up one flight of stairs to my 3rd floor office. Hey! No muss, no fuss, no bus.

I left the city tuesday morning via nj transit. i am sitting in new jersey for the holidays now, and if the strike is still on when i get back... i'm not going to be happy.

I guess this really isn't a work commute, but this is what I did for the girlfriend last night: I walked from lafayette and canal to 26th and 6th to meet up with her at a bar she was at. From there we took a cab to 70 something and madison at which point i watched a large portion of the small amount of money i recieved from selling overpriced textbooks back to NYU disappear. Then from there to where she lives in the 90's (How a rich girl decides to date someone as poor as me i'll never know), more of my very small sum of money gone. I left her place about midnight to go back home to lafayette and canal, by the time the cab had gotten into the 20's i just told him to stop because I couldn't afford to have him go any further, and then i enjoyed my lovely walk in the cold home. I love you mta. Now get the subways running or I have no idea how I will make it to JFK for my flight on friday.

I walked from Greenpoint across the Queensboro bridge to Midtown, a 4-or-so mile walk that took from 10 to 11:30. But when I got to the office, it was closed. I grabbed lunch and walked back home, maligned.

clinton hill, brooklyn to 77nd and Madison. on foot. it was fun once, but to do it again would get old quite quickly.

The TWU needs to end this illegal strike as soon as possible. The MTA
actually GAVE UP the 55 year retirement requirement. They GAVE UP
the 1% contribution to health care. They were willing to give the workers 11.5%
over three years. The deal was so good that the TWU's parent organization
advocated taking the deal!



Look, I respect the transit workers for doing a dirty and sometimes dangerous
job. But sanitation workers do dirtier jobs and get less. Police have more
dangerous jobs and their new hires get a lot less. I'm a teacher and I need to
get a freakin' Masters' Degree to stay in the school system and I get less.



The sad fact is that Toussaint realized that he had to strike or the threat of
striking would cease to be a weapon for Local 100.



The only good thing that could come out of this is that Local 100 is doomed
if they don't stop the strike. Their assets will be gone and if 1980 is any
guide if they ever do go back to work, they will lose dues check-off
(automatic payment of union dues) and will be sunk. And the longer this strike
goes on, the more transit workers will see any potential gain eaten up by the
Taylor Law. So, perhaps 100 will die and I won't ever have to bike over the
bone-freezing Manhattan Bridge ever again.

regular commute: subway from 190 to broadway-lafayette, 45 minutes

today: wait in my house until the guy who is supposed to be driving calls me. He calls 30 minutes after I wanted to leave, and tells me he's not driving. Thanks. Walk out the door (broadway + 196)with my husband and within a block are offered a ride ("we need 2 more!") we keep walking because we are meeting another person from our failed carpool. The three of us walk down broadway until we get to 125th. Another co-worker calls to say that she took metro-north. We turn on 125th and walk the 9 crosstown blocks to the train station. We get in line for tickets. There is a policeman telling us to buy our tickets on the train, so we head up to the platform. A train is pulling up, so we jump on and squeeze in. Nobody comes by to take our money. We get to Grand Central in about 10 minutes. Walk over to Fifth Ave and straight down to 17th, where I say good by to my husband, then I continue down through washington square park and the NYU campus. Finally get to work, total time: 3 hours.

So who wins?

NYPL--pretty smart plan. gotta hand it to them librarians. they're brainy. I personally got the hell out of dodge at 6 this morning. Boy was I lucky.

I walked to work today all the way from 13th Street to Irving Street. Oh, wait, I live in DC now.

i live on water st. and hanover sq. way downtown. i work on 59th and lex. this morning i biked up there, freezing my ass off only to get to my building and have the building management disallow me entrance to the building with my bike. i a) didn't have a lock with me and b) refused to use their unmonitored bike rack to stow my shiny (non city proofed yet) bike all day. after listening to my boss ream the management for twenty minutes i decided to give up the ghost and go home. rode back, got home, only to find an email from my boss saying that after an hour of arguing the management finally agreed to let people bring their bikes up the freight elevator. what crapheads. so basically jack resnick and sons ( http://www.resnicknyc.com/ ) can go f\/[|

best workday ever... library employees from the three systems were instructed to go to their nearest branch to ensure continued service. so i walked about three blocks AND got to come home for lunch and the library users in my neighborhood are pretty nice. thanks, twu!!

walked to flatbush lirr station. waited 1.5 hours in line for a ticket that was never looked at by anyone. took a nap while taking the lirr to jamaica. 1.5 hour wait in the snaking line outside of the lirr station. took lirr to penn station, walked 25 blocks to the office. 4.5 hours total. i'm a chump. should have just walked.

My final exams were postponed until after winter break, too. Thanks for giving me the buttest Christmas ever. Can't wait for vacation so I can start RE-STUDYING for all these goddamned tests that I was planning to take tomorrow.

My personal fav: heard a union rep on the radio this morning attempting to contextualize this strike as the natural expression of what Rosa Parks stood for and that it was, in effect, the only reasonable way to honor her legacy and recent passing.

The net effect was a particularly fumbling example of ideological piratetry reminiscent of the Bush administration. I hope the TWU's efforts to position this strike within the context of the evolution of the noble workers struggle succeeds beyond their wildest dreams and accelerates the conversation to it's inevitable conclusion: this is not the 19th or 20th centuries and they are not fighting for basic human rights. The unions today are little more than sedentary bastions of protectionism & cronyism. Damn, retire at 52?!?

1.5 hrs to work.

bmici, could explain that again in your first language? It might make more sense!