A Family Day

Our family went down to Philly today for the Phillies parade. We started walking to the train station around 9:30. We were going to drive, but my mom called and said traffic was backed up way down main street. We decided to walk. My dad had his hair cut and was driving down our street, so he gave us ride the rest of the way.

When we got in sight of the station, we couldn't believe our eyes. It was packed. There were people everywhere. A mass of people on the train platforms waiting for a train and a long line coming out of the station waiting to buy tickets.

Officials had been saying to take mass transit to the city for the parade but SEPTA was not prepared for the amount of people who actually did so. They couldn't meet the demand and ended up telling people to find other transportation to the city. [The news reported that approximately 400,000 people used the subway system, up from an average of 150,000 people, and the Regional Rail system was used by about 300,000 people, up from a normal 130,000 people.]

As people started taking the find-other-transportation advice, the lines thinned out considerably. Amazingly in about 5 minutes, more than half the people left. We were undecided about what to do. A train was sitting on the tracks, and a woman was exclaiming not so nicely and not using my choice of words, that they were told to disembark so that us Phillies paraders could get on and go downtown. [Gary said that for some trains Lansdale is the end of the line and this train was probably one of those trains.] I thought we should wait and see if SEPTA would let those of us still there on the train.

They did. We even got seats. We were on our way. I believe that although our train was not express, we didn't stop on the way down to center city. There just wasn't any room for anyone else.

The streets of Philadelphia were wall to wall people along the parade route. The only way we could sort of see was looking through a subway glass enclosure. Since people were not right in front of us, we could see the tip top of the parade floats.

After the parade went by, we made our way to Reading Terminal Market for lunch. I think many others did as well. We did find a food establishment without much of a line. And we had a place to sit and eat. Not that the kids did much of that.

We headed back to Market Street station and discovered that they weren't even letting passengers down on the platform to get on a train. I asked where trains were before they came here. Gary said 30th Street Station. So we took the subway (for free - they were just herding people on) to 30th St. and made our way to the fairly unpacked platform. We got seats on the first train that came by. It stopped once letting people on to stand and headed out of the city.

When we started making stops to let people off, the stops were way longer than necessary. At Elkins park we were sitting for about 30 min. As I was looking out the windows, for what else is there to do besides stare at other passengers, I noticed a police car coming toward the parking lot. Than another and another and another. All the policeman walked toward the train. In all I think there were 6 police cars. There was no explanation to us passengers, though. We just started up again and went on our way.

After a 2 hour train ride that should have taken 61 minutes, we were finally in Lansdale. [I looked at the schedule and on a normal Friday, the train leaves 30th street station at 3:13 and leaves Lansdale at 4:14.] Our train ride was a slightly longer.

But hey, we were on a train.