One thing you have to love about the British is their outlook on delays. I have been at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports and seen people look at the departures board to see their flights delayed. In America this results in a lot of frustration. People are frantically on their cell phones. We have all seen people angrily read books like the DaVinci Code in airports. The British however see that their flight or anything is delayed as a rational reason to stay in the pub longer.

One thing I question about the British however is their ideas on Transportation. Sure the Tube is exceptionally clean, and they don't even mind if you eat on the Tube. As an aside, sometimes on the weekends I do a fun thing I like to call "Tube Picnics" where I stop off at the local supermarket and while going to visit friends, a tourist site, or the aforementioned pub, and pick up a sandwich and ride the tube with my own movable feast. But anyway, when I worked in NYC, I arguably worked in the heart of the financial district for 7 of the 9 years I was there. From where I worked there were a plethora of transportation options, I could take the subway, trains to New Jersey, ferries, buses, affordable cabs, and in a pinch it was an easy walk to other parts of Manhattan. I was in Manhattan for five incredibly nightmarish transportation events and all of them it took me no more than double the time to go home. The five, for those keeping score at home were:

1. 9/11
2. The blackout
3. The day it poured rain and the subways went down (2007)
4. The subway strike
5. The GOP Convention 2004

So now I work, in arguably the new financial hub of London. They have set this up smartly in old docklands on a peninsula on the southern shores of the Thames. Good Ideas so far! But here is where it gets ugly, they have two train lines going in and out. They have some buses that go to places the majority of people don't want to go, and where there are no real connections to anywhere else. So last night the magic train that takes me and most everyone else to and from work was down. No problem, like all proper British employees we retired to the pub. It was however while on my second pint I realized the ultimate fear. What if the trains do not come back up. I am going to have settled in for a few hours with everyone else and then have to figure out my way home, and while I am doing that with a few thousand slightly to very intoxicated other frustrated commuters. In the old days my sense of adventure would have lead me to up my pint intake up and throw caution to the wind and prepare to ride such chaos like I was Patrick Swayze in Point Break. But the Lake can be responsible from time to time, so I left at 8PM. Here is the rest of my journey home.

• Wait for about half an hour to get on a train
• Take said train in the opposite direction from home
• Walk for about an hour, kind of knowing where I am going
• Check and see, yup trains are still down
• Take a bus towards home.
• Check and see, trains dead.
• Get to a bus stop, see there are throngs of people. Wait for third bus to come to finally get on
• Stand. upstairs on the bus for 40 minute ride home.
• Finally arrive home.

All told it took me about four times as long to get home as it normally does. My one saving grace is I checked the web and the lines were still down, and that was about the time the pubs start shutting down.

Can't wait to go to work this morning!!!!!

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