The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

Yesterday more than made up for the relatively low quality of my first 26th Erkday. I am going to just call it my 26th birthday and be done with it.

In the morning, I realised a bit late that the second day of the mid-year conference started at 9:45, not at 10:30 like the previous day. I still got out of the house with plenty of time to make it, and walked through the dusting of snow and gentle chilly breeze left over from last night's storm. It was beautiful, and the sun was shining down and warming my black jacket, and all was well.

It turns out that for some reason (the best we can come up with is ice on the tracks) the morning trains were delayed over 20 minutes. I caught the 8:55 train, but it didn't come to Natori until about 9:20. That means, of course, that it had all the passengers trying to catch the 8:55, 9:05, 9:15, and others. This is a rush hour level train already.

Suffice to say, at Natori station alone there were enough passengers to fill a train past its comfort point, and the train when it arrived was already full. I have no idea how we all managed to cram in. I got quickly shoved into the middle of the car, which was kinda good because I could shove other people further into the middle and disperse some of the pressure, which usually gathers at the doors and gets clotted in the aisles by gaggles of immobile high schoolers. [Even so, there was a woman near me who stoically stood her ground, keeping that 1 square foot of free space beside her so that we could not move futher into the middle. What is wrong with people?]

By Minami Sendai station, the next stop, I couldn't move even a little. The other two ALTs on the car with me had it even worse (arguably better in some ways): they were squashed so tightly against the people around them, they could barely breathe. Chris' arms were starting to hurt by then, I think. However, on the bright side, apparently they were crushed up against some pretty cute little ladies, so they struck up a conversation. I guess if you're gonna get that close, you may as well not be strangers!

At the next stop, we had a pretty even flow of on-off passengers, all near the door. At Nagamachi, though, a large group of eldery folk had to get off. Amazingly, despite our already compact state, everyone manage to crush even more to make a narrow aisle for them to escape through. It was impressive.

By the time we got to Sendai, I felt very connected with the other passengers of the train, and I think I may have been pregnant. It was also time for the seminar to start, and we were still at the station. Rather than getting a cab, which none of us were really set up to pay for, I and the other two ALTs from the train decided to walk. Along the way we picked up a third straggler. We had quite a good hike, and arrived at the conference about halfway through the first seminar. Others were still filing in: a few decided to brave it and go to class more than halfway through it; our group of Rebels cycled a few members, and then we headed out for tea until class was done. I just don't care enough about Effective Use of the Textbook to barge into the middle of an already-underway group discussion to hear about it, folks.

If you can't tell, so far this is a GREAT morning. I was having an awesome time, from train claustrophobia to skipping class. I'll have to write more about the day later, though, as I have to start preparing for guests arriving today.