On the Platform

A few days ago, I got onto the no. 1 uptown train at 59th street.

But the train doors wouldn't close.

After about five minutes, the conductor announced that the train was going out of service because of a broken door.

This was during Rush Hour, so the train was packed!

Hundreds of people piled out of the subway cars and onto the crowded platform.

I snapped a picture of it. The 59th street station is curved, so it provides a clear view all the way down the platform.

I just realized that there's a man sticking out his tongue in the foreground! Haha! The unexpected always happens in candid photographs....

EDIT (5/25/12):
Yesterday I experienced another crazy traveling story!!

I was sitting peacefully on the bus ride home from school (I take a bus from my college to the train station, and from the train station I take 3 additional trains home), totally absorbed in my book. We just passed over the Van Wyke Expressway, a long stretch where the bus makes no stops for a few minutes.

All of a sudden, the bus stopped. Absorbed in my book, I hardly noticed the commotion around me. After about 30 seconds, I glanced up... and noticed that the bus was surrounded with dense white smoke!! So dense that I could not see anything outside the windows!

The bus driver had left the bus to investigate. I watched him closely out the window through the smoke. About 10 seconds later, he ran back on the bus and commanded that everyone EVACUATE immediately!!

My instincts told me to get as far away from the bus as possible. Along with the other passengers, I pushed my way out of the bus and began walking as fast as I could away from the smokey bus. Eventually I walked the rest of the way to the train station, about a quarter-mile distance.

Here is a photo I snapped of the bus surrounded by smoke. A large wind came, dissipating some of the smoke by the time I took the picture, but you can still see the effect:

Some people were very calm and some extremely nervous. I don't remember how I felt; I just wanted to get as far away from the bus as possible in case it blew up (as my mother says, I was "catastrophizing").

I have no idea what happened to the bus. But it was certainly a crazy afternoon!