Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Replacing two-day old fish eyes with fresh fish eyes

This needs to be made into an animated short, please.

Readers Share Their Commuting Stories - New York Times

I set my alarm clock for 3:30 a.m. to begin my walk from Fordham Rd, the Bronx, to my office near Wall St. on Maiden Lane. I could have taken a cab to save some of the trip but the lines were stretched around the block, even at this hour!

A young man passing by on a two-seater bicycle offered to give me a lift some of the way downtown, and I accepted figuring I could use a little company. We started pedaling our tandem bike south, while I alerted fellow pedestrians of our presence with the sounding of the handlebar bell. We made it into Manhattan and were on the sidewalk of the FDR when the bikes chain snapped. A nice man fishing off the pier told us he would fix our chain for 20 dollars. I told him to keep fishing.

We pushed the bike for the next few miles and during that time I became aware that I had not said more than two words to the man who pedaled 50% of my load from the Bronx to Manhattan so I broke the ice by asking him his name. He said his name was 'Alejandro' and he did not speak 'so much English.' He was heading to work in a fish market where his job was to take the eyes off of fresh fish heads and put them in two-day-old fish to make them look fresh. He said he went to school for this in his country. When we got to his job he told me to keep the bike because he stole it. I did not know that the bike was stolen. I left it outside a police precinct and walked the remaining blocks to work to find out that we were closed due to the strike. I do not know the politics behind this MTA strike but feel that it has made me do things that I would never do if the buses were running.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mandy, I am not 100% the quickest. I thought that you had a link followed by a story about your morning. I thought it was weird that you were in the Bronx, but I was willing to accept it. In fact, I didn't really think not to. Then I read your story to a friend and was like, "This is so crazy; check out what happened with Mandy." Then I clicked on the link. Silly me.