by Christine F. Della Monaca
Monster Staff Writer
Rate this article:
Average rating:
Total votes: 7
The commute to work can be a lot of the same: Get from point A to point B, whether by car, public transit, or even bike or foot. Except sometimes, an odd event happens along the way that makes your ordinary ride extraordinary.
We asked Monster members about the oddest, most amazing, craziest things they’ve seen during their commutes. While not all the stories are for the faint of heart, they’re definitely entertaining.
Last summer, I was driving in slow-moving traffic on the Washington, DC, Capital Beltway when I noticed a small pickup truck behind me was weaving back and forth and having a hard time staying in its lane. As the truck got closer to me, I looked in my rearview mirror and discovered why the driver was having such a hard time keeping his vehicle on the road. He was playing the flute! To make matters worse, he was reading sheet music that was laid out on his dashboard.
_________________________________________________________________
The first commuting day from my home to UCLA, I was driving home and the traffic came to a complete stop! All the negative factors of being in traffic were in full force: hot weather, bumper to bumper and a 5:30 p.m. commute time with what seemed like half of the state of California. As we approached the fire engines and all the other emergency vehicles, I thought this must be a very big accident. It was on the opposite side of my commute home. So as I approach this big accident, I look where the vehicles are, and there is a plane that had landed. Though it didn't look like it hit anyone, there were many cars whose sudden stop caused them to take up many lanes to avoid hitting or getting hit by the plane. Two and a half hours later, I got home.
___________________________________________________________________
I was on the F train going from Brooklyn to Manhattan, about 10 a.m. The train was full, and a man got on at Delancey Street. He was about 60, wearing a worn but clean suit and tie, scuffed shoes and a trench coat, and he was carrying a shopping bag. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, he walked over to the doors and faced them like he was looking in a mirror. From the shopping bag, he removed a Chinese takeout soup container of water and began pouring it over his head.
From his pocket, he took out a small bar of soap and began washing his hair. He took out another soup container of water and rinsed out the soap. Then he washed his face and also took a few ice cubes from his pocket and kept rubbing them over his face for several minutes. At this point, we had just passed the Broadway-Lafayette station. He splashed the remaining water over his head and face. The floor was quite wet, and he took off his trench coat and shook off the water, placed it neatly over his arm, put the soup containers back in the shopping bag and got off at West Fourth Street. He dumped the shopping bag in the garbage can on the platform and proceeded on his way, looking refreshed and clean.
_______________________________________________________________
Driving to work one morning, I looked over at the car next to me, and the guy was brushing his teeth! Where was he going to spit?
___________________________________________________________________
While driving through a school zone in South Florida, I noticed the driver in front of me was driving rather erratically. She swerved from one side of the lane to the other and back. Fortunately the speed limit was only 15 mph, and she was only doing about 10. I passed her, and as I went by, I noticed she was smoking. In between puffs on her cigarette, she was using an asthma inhaler. She had the inhaler in one hand and the cigarette in the other and was alternating between the two while switching hands on the steering wheel -- thus the erratic movements of her car.
___________________________________________________________________
One morning as I and about 5 million other cars were stuck on 101 North in Phoenix, I happened to glance over at a blue Honda. There was a girl on the cell phone, which isn't unusual. What was unusual was that she was shaving her legs. That's right. She had one leg up on the dashboard and was using an electric shaver to free her gams from nasty little hairs. I looked away and looked back, thinking my Starbucks had been spiked, but, no, there she was, talking on the cell phone and shaving her legs. I've seen people read, eat a salad and even tie a tie, but I've never seen anyone performing acts of personal hygiene in their vehicle.
________________________________________________________________
I work in Center City Philadelphia and take the SEPTA R5 Regional Rail line in from the suburbs. On the ride in, we go past West Philly, which is a bit run-down. A few blocks on that stretch are particularly bad, complete with boarded-up buildings, burnt-out cars, etc. While taking the train this morning, I was looking out the window and saw a boat lying in the middle of the street. Yes, a boat. It was white, about 12 feet long, mostly intact. But that's not the strange part. The strange part is that someone sprayed graffiti on the side of the boat that read, "3 hour tour?"
___________________________________________________________________
I saw a person driving down a major highway with a speed limit of 70 mph holding a bowl and eating cereal with a spoon while driving with his knees. It was 7:30 in the morning, and traffic was trying to get around him as he tooled along at about 60 mph.
___________________________________________________________________
A homeless man on the subway line going to Oak Park suburb of Chicago proceeded to take all his clothes off until he was naked and then turned them inside out and put them all back on.
___________________________________________________________________
Last year's highway construction resulted in several standing detours, some of which went through some rather questionable neighborhoods. One morning as I was driving through one of these areas, a "lady of the evening" was standing along the shoulder of the road and raised her top -- flashing all of us commuters on our way to the office. Needless to say, it was a new morning eye-opener to go along with the morning cup of coffee.