i guess the $4.50 it cost to fill the tank of my scooter for the week will pay off today.

Adults are allowed to ride bikes too.

2- how do you ride scooters? I can't even imagine how hot that helmet is under this blazing sun. combine that with the fact that you are unprotected against the elements like sun, rain, wind and you get the smell of wonderful dirt and exhaust blown your way everytime you ride. and you have to find parking and have to lock your motorped with a lock. Not to mention the shitty shocks from riding on potholes and cobblestones. I'm always amazed at how Vespa finds suckers to buy these hell contraptions. They sucker them with this romantic image of scooters but it's really inconvenient. Maybe if you were riding in toronto or something.

7- my friend bought this vintage Vespa. Showed it around for 2 weeks and then one day someone stole his side mirror. a month later, someone wrote some graffitti on his brown leather seat and a couple months later entire moped was stolen, even though he had it locked. I've ridden a scooter once and it's like having a face full of soot thrown in your face.

Forget that "has sorted out the trouble" stuff -- it didn't happen. This was posted at around 6:00; I was on Long Island. Caught the LIRR in Farmingdale heading back to the city and trouble started right away.

My 6:25 train should have arrived in Jamaica before 7. I decided I'd take it there instead of staying on to Woodside, which normally would have been my best option, because of the above notice about the 7. But the train moved so slowly ("due to a track condition we will be proceeding at 5 mph for a short time") it didn't get to Jamaica until 7:15. I then got on the E.

Train arrived promptly enough, but then started pausing for long delays. Eventually an announcement (barely heard over the crying kids and booming boombox on my car) was made that because of track fires we were switching to the local track; the express track was closed supposedly. So, proceeding... stopping regularly between stations because of "congestion" and at each local stop for three to four minutes.

After we passed 71/st Continental an F went by on the supposedly closed express stop. Then another E. And a second F. And a second E. Finally as we arrived at Union Tnpke, the reported location of the track fire, the announcement was made that we would be switching back to the express track. As we sat there, another F arrived. Then a garbled announcement seemed to be saying that our train was staying local. At that point I bailed out and headed upstairs to the 7. Where there were about 150 people waiting on the platform -- "due to an earlier incident at 90th Street."

But I could see the lights of a train in the distance, so hung in. The train arrived a few minutes later, and all went well until Queensboro Plaza... where the announcement (the logic of which still escapes me) was made: "due to the earlier incident at 90th Street, this train is going out of service." A second train, we were told was waiting right behind it and would make all stops. Of course, the empty train I just got off of then sat blocking the track for a full 12 minutes.

Finally the second train was allowed to move in. End result: an additional hour and 25 minutes to what should have been a 1:10 trip.

Ah... summer!

I had to go to Queens yesterday at 8pm, so found myself on the platform at Grand Central waiting for the 7 train. I reached the platform, which is somewhere around level 5 in the pits of hell, just in time to see a train pull out. (Thanks lazy fatties who can't walk down the escalator!)

15 minutes later, they start cryptically announcing that trains are delayed because of a mechanical failure of a train at 90th st. Which is odd, because 90th St is a local stop all the fucking way in Flushing -- but I guess the MTA can't figure out how to run 7 trains from Times Square to every place else on all the other tracks.

Like any normal New Yorker, I ignore the suggestions offered by the MTA to try taking the 456 to 59th and switching to the N/R, since nine times out of ten, in the time it takes for the donkeys making announcements to learn of a problem, figure out an alternate path, and pass it on to customers, the problem has probably been fixed.

This must have been time number ten, since 20 minutes later a train still hadn't come. So I catch a 6 to 59th and switch to the R to Queensboro Plaza-- get off the train to catch a bus. I walk 2 blocks to the bus stop, only to find a Q60 bus being hooked up to a tow truck while about 200 people milled about in the sweltering heat. Another Q60 pulls up, and everyone crams on, through the front door, through the back door without paying- heck if windows were open they'd probably have tried to squeeze in that way.

I got lucky and caught a cab. Thanks MTA.