So yesterday I worked until 3pm. My brother gave me a ride to work, which was awesome of him to do. When I got out of work, I went to get on the metro- I work at Pentagon City Mall, so the metro is really super convenient for me. First I went outside to have a cigarette, then crossed over to enter the metro from outside the mall. The escalators were closed. Hmm, I thought. Well, no matter- I'll just go back into the mall to get into the metro from that entrance. By the way- I worked yesterday on a sprained ankle, so by this point in the day, it was pretty much throbbing from walking around VS all afternoon.
So I go back into the mall, go downstairs to the metro entrance there, and it's closed too. Now I'm getting irritated.
I go back outside, cross the road to the other entrance, and surprise surprise- closed. It's so hot out, and I'm wearing my all-black VS clothes. There are two guys wearing bright metro clothes, so I ask them what's going on. They inform me that (obviously) Pentagon City Metro is closed, and I have to take a shuttle bus to the Pentagon, where I can proceed home. Okay. Not too awful, I think to myself. Just one stop out of my way.
So I get on the shuttle, get off at the Pentagon, go down into the depths of the metro, and wait for the yellow line to come so I can just get home and put my foot up and ice my ankle.
A train comes. It's going in the wrong direction, so I'm confused. A metro worker walks by, so I ask him when the train to Huntington will be coming. He informs me that the train is not running, and there is a shuttle bus outside that will take me to where I need to go.
I limp back upstairs and outside to the buses. A sign tells me I have to go to the lower level to get to the shuttle bus. The escalators are not working.
I limp down the stairs. A sign tells me that I have to go to the L-5 spot to get on the shuttle to take me to Braddock road, where I will finally be able to get on the train.
So I wait at L-5, take a swig of my water, read a little bit of my Jane Austen book, and suddenly wonder why it is that the buses are stopping at L-4 and L-6, but not L-5. I limp over to another worker, who illuminates the situation by telling me that I should have been at L-6 the whole time, and to hurry up and get on the bus before it leaves.
Finally, I sit on the bus, blessing the air conditioning.
We get to Braddock, and I get off and enter the metro station. An attendant is just waving everyone through the gate, not making us swipe our cards, so I go up and sit down at the platform to wait for the yellow line train to come. Naturally, the blue line comes first, and I contemplate taking that to Franconia-Springfield, but it's a little more out of the way for my brother to pick me up from, so, being considerate, I wait for the yellow line. When it comes, I call him to let him know I'll be at Huntington- finally- in a few minutes. He insists on speaking Spanish to me, and I contemplate strangling him over the phone. Due to technical details, that wouldn't work, so I simply say "Thank you."
I get on the train and sprawl out across two seats and try to elevate my poor ankle. Doesn't really work.
Three stops, then I'm there, I tell myself. The first stop is King Street. People get off the train, people get off the train, the doors close, the train starts moving, then stops. Just kidding! Hahaha. We wait at King Street for five minutes to get authorization to keep moving.
Eventually, we get to Huntington, where the escalators are again not working, and I limp down the fifty steps. I swipe my metro card and it tells me to see the station manager, who tells me I was supposed to swipe my card at Braddock (you remember how they just waved us through the gate? They were not supposed to do that.) So the manager swipes my card on one side, so I can do that again on the other, and get out of there.
My brother is not there when I get outside, so I collapse onto the curb in the shade and smoke a cigarette. When he does pull up next to me, it takes me a full thirty seconds to motivate myself to stand up and get in the car. He is nice enough to stop at the grocery store on the way home so I can buy wine, because I deserved it.