Here’s how I normally get to work: I take the 1 from the station a couple blocks from my apartment, then take the 2/3 to Wall Street. It generally takes about forty minutes from door to door.

Here’s how I got to work this morning: I walked to the 1 station a couple blocks from my apartment, where I discovered that there was no downtown service due to flooding. I walked east a couple avenues and south a couple streets to and took the C one stop downtown, where I transferred to the A (theoretically faster). However, the A turned out to be “experiencing delays,” and we sat between stations for an extraordinarily long time. I arrived at the 42nd St station at about 10am (which is when I normally arrive at work). My plan was to transfer again to the 2/3 at 42nd St, but as it turned out the place was filled to capacity with cops and stranded commuters, and was in the process of being evacuated because of flooding and “excessive heat.” (To be fair, it was really fucking hot down there.) So I went up to the street level, near the Port Authority exit, and walked over to the 42nd St and 7th Avenue entrance, thinking I might be able to get the 2/3 from there - but no, when I got downstairs again, nothing was running but the shuttle to Grand Central. So I took the shuttle to Grand Central, supposing I’d be able to take the 4/5 from there to Wall St. And indeed, after I waited for the shuttle, fought through the crowd at Grand Central, and made it to the 4/5 platform, a train did in fact show up - but it was taken out of service at Union Square.

At that point, I gave up and got a cab (already forty minutes late for work by the time I caught one), which promptly got stuck in traffic. I ended up bailing on the cab about 12 blocks north of my building and walking through the rain the rest of the way there. I arrived, soaking wet, an hour and fifteen minutes late. It took me two and a half hours to get there.