You can’t get theya from heya …

It is time for me to accept the fact that I am transportationally challenged.

It is often hard to accept when we are different, but there is no denying this anymore. Beyond the whole can’t drive legally thing, it seems that I am not qualified to even use … gasp … public transportation. And in these parts apparently this affliction is not actually acknowledged, because the powers that be make no allowances for the transportationally challenged.

""Anyone who has driven anywhere near an east coast city knows … well not to drive anywhere near an east coast city. Any kind of signage is invariably geared towards someone who actually already knows where they are going, and it is really a mystery how someone achieves this state of knowledge considering the signage. Beyond that the average city is planned around cow paths all going to the same place, which basically means no rhyme or reason to a human mind.

But not to worry. Most larger east coast cities have a public transit system.

The only problem is those who design the public transit went to the same school as those who designed the roads. They subscribe to the minimalistic and rather ineffective version of signage too. The basic theory is in order to figure out how to get around one must already know how to get around. Saves all the effort required to actually inform the uniformed. They have no business being uninformed anyway!

For example, in a recent trip to Boston with my brother-in-law and niece (we went to the Children’s Museum) we decided that we would park at a T station (for those not familiar with Boston, that is the Boston subway system), so that we would not have to mortgage the house for parking in the city if we could even find any. We made it in fine, did our museum thing, and then decided to get some good chinese food afterwards. The Museum is near China Town, so we walked to find a good place to eat.

""This of course resulted in us being near a different T station than we arrived at, but all seemed good, because it was on the line that we wanted to be on. So we ate, and then walked the short distance to the station to begin our journey back to the car. We buy our tickets, enter the station, go down to the track, and find signs that say the train is going in the opposite direction that we want. Thinking we just need to be on the other side of the station, we look to find out how to cross over.

And you can’t.

Seems that this particular station at least is technically two stations. One inbound. One outbound. Which was completely obvious if we had already known this. Of course there were no signs that told you this OUTSIDE the station unless you knew in advance what to look for. So we had to leave the station, and cross the street to pay to get back in again.

I did come up with the clever idea of just taking the train to the next station and flipping trains there so we did not have to pay again. Naturally after we already left the station.

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