The Morning in the Village

Up at three.  Adults get their passports renewed every ten years, but minors need them done every five.  And if this little girl was going to board a plane next week, we’d need to get this done.   No appointments left though, not in the New York area.  “The lady on the phone said if we get there at 7:30AM it should be OK.  We should be able to get it done.”  And so, with this degree of surety we decided to make the journey down from New Paltz to Hudson St.

There’s a Trailways bus down to the City that leaves at 4:50AM.  I have no idea if the 4:50AM bus is crowded or not on a Thursday morning.  At 3:30AM I’m fiddling with the Trailways web site and pursue matters nearly till closure only to learn that I’ll need to print the tickets out.  There are no e-tickets and we don’t have a printer.  Do they take cash?  Is the bus station office even open?  Once again, we’ll need to proceed ahead and embrace the ambiguity.

Looking eerily like bus station from an old Twilight Zone episode, we roll up at 4:30AM there are two gents sitting there.  An imposing young bald man is quite helpful and explains that no, the office isn’t open and no you don’t want to park here as they’ll charge you and yes, they do take cash, on the bus.  A five-minute drive away, by the entrance to the New York State Throughway is a large half-filled parking lot where we sit and wait for the bus to come.  And when it does there are half a dozen people in line and at least twice that many on the bus itself.  But we find seats and I dim the light on my computer and try to be productive as we race down, towards New Jersey and the Lincoln Tunnel without much of any traffic to speak of. 

Port Authority is horrible at 6:30AM, just like it is any time of day.  I ask two cops where the A C & E trains are and they point me down the escalator and before I know it we’re walking out into the morning in the Village at West Fourth St., which essentially looks like West Fourth St. station always looked.  No. My wife doesn’t want to walk.  We catch the first cab coming and soon we step out into a 6:50AM line that snakes around the block and back around, and up to the door.  I have a call that starts at 7:00AM and plug in my head phones and act as though I’m in a board room, making smart, authoritative comments, from time to time, standing in line with a few hundred other New Yorkers who also need expedited passports.   

Thursday 8/08/19