Passenger of the Week.

[JavaJiver]

I have decided that on a weekly basis I will highlight one rider that goes out of their way to make the experience that much more profound for those around them.  Someone who through no small amount of effort left on the table gives everyone a reason to further dread their commute.  It is no insignificant thing to be a Passenger of the Week, it is truly an honor and a privilege to be elevated in such a fashion.

This weeks winner can be named on Wednesday because no one short of a gun wielding madman is going to take the prize away from him.


This guy snored from thirty seconds after sitting down until I woke him up.

Normally snoring is not such a big deal to me but this guy was drawing attention from those on the other side of the double doors.  It was absolutely obscene in volume and duration.

After I woke him up he went back to sleep and snored again until someone woke him up and directly told him that he was snoring quite loudly and was disturbing...well everyone.
He then went back to sleep and was again brought back to the waking world.
Yeah, you guessed it...he went back to sleep...again...and started snoring...again.
In all I believe he was awakened five or six times before I finally got over it and stood in the vestibule where the rushing wind was a welcomed sound when compared to his snoring.

So, Snoring Man, you are Java's Passenger of the Week!

Oh and...yeah it is a picture of him...who cares...no names were used and I figured it was pretty obscure.

[lyra]

Good one.  Geesh, no one bribed the guy sitting behind him to continually kick his seat back or something?

My passenger of the week so far is the hippie schoolteacher looking middle aged lady who sat next to me last night.  I knew it was going to be a fun ride when she bought her ticket to Madison on the train with cash. (Dear tourists, I kind of get the feeling the conductors don't like breaking $20s every few seats. Go buy your tickets at the machines already)

So we pull out of the station, and she puts on her headphones, and starts *dancing* from the waist up. In the seat. You know, weaving hippie trance dancing, nodding her head, waving her arms around a bit.  In our teensy two seater. I had my laptop out and was attempting to ssh into my server and get a bit of work done while she was weaving away next to me. I elbowed her a couple times and she never got the point. I'd have moved, but you couldn't even stand the train was so packed.   

[mhnj]

I think I had snoring man on my train recently. I don't remember him being exceptionally loud, but the way he sat looks just like the picture.

[JavaJiver]

Well...Mr Snores got beat out for this week by a suicide...

[mhnj]

Well...Mr Snores got beat out for this week by a suicide...

Except that he (do we know if it's a "he"?) was probably not a passenger.

[JavaJiver]

Well...Mr Snores got beat out for this week by a suicide...

Except that he (do we know if it's a "he"?) was probably not a passenger.

No, I am just saying "Mr. Snores".
Mr. Snores was totally a man.

[JerseyAveVet]

Here's my submission for passenger of the week:

Coming back to Newark last Friday on the PATH.  At JSQ, nice-looking guy, 25 or so, khakis and polo shirt, carrying a bag, gets on, stands next to me, of course, directly facing the door.  As soon as the train left JSQ, he started talking to himself, in low but audible voice: "Why did I take this train?  I can't believe I'm going to miss my connection.  Who runs this system?  They have absolutely no consideration for anyone or anything.  PATH?  They should call it PATHetic.  [That was a good one.]  I can't believe I'm going to miss my train...I can't believe I'm going to miss my train...Why didn't I just drive?  Why am I putting myself through this shit?" 

The worst part was that the train was so packed that I couldn't move away from him.  All of us around him started looking at each other nervously. 

Over and over again, and on and on it went, without a stop: "I can't believe I'm going to miss my train."  Then, after we left Harrison, the train came to a brief halt on the bridge into Newark.  That's when I started praying, silently: "Oh God, please move this train before this poor kid falls down and starts foaming at the mouth." 

And then it started moving and we pulled into Newark, and he got off and sprinted for the NJCL.   I hope he made it.

I felt awful for him -- he was clearly suffering from something; or maybe not on his usual meds; who knows.  I can't remember when I've been so scared on a train, not even when the conductor had a heart attack and fell on top of me back in the 90s.       

[JavaJiver]

Here's my submission for passenger of the week:

Coming back to Newark last Friday on the PATH.  At JSQ, nice-looking guy, 25 or so, khakis and polo shirt, carrying a bag, gets on, stands next to me, of course, directly facing the door.  As soon as the train left JSQ, he started talking to himself, in low but audible voice: "Why did I take this train?  I can't believe I'm going to miss my connection.  Who runs this system?  They have absolutely no consideration for anyone or anything.  PATH?  They should call it PATHetic.  [That was a good one.]  I can't believe I'm going to miss my train...I can't believe I'm going to miss my train...Why didn't I just drive?  Why am I putting myself through this shit?" 

The worst part was that the train was so packed that I couldn't move away from him.  All of us around him started looking at each other nervously. 

Over and over again, and on and on it went, without a stop: "I can't believe I'm going to miss my train."  Then, after we left Harrison, the train came to a brief halt on the bridge into Newark.  That's when I started praying, silently: "Oh God, please move this train before this poor kid falls down and starts foaming at the mouth." 

And then it started moving and we pulled into Newark, and he got off and sprinted for the NJCL.   I hope he made it.

I felt awful for him -- he was clearly suffering from something; or maybe not on his usual meds; who knows.  I can't remember when I've been so scared on a train, not even when the conductor had a heart attack and fell on top of me back in the 90s.       

Holy crap...
There is nothing more terrifying than someone talking to themselves.

They may be an winner.

[njrangergirl]

Ok, ok...  I know it should be a passenger on NJ Transit BUT...  I would like to nominate the seemingly normal looking woman in the E train station last night who was standing on the platform with a bottle of water - half empty or half full depending upon your optimism - balanced on her head. Now either, she just got out of Barbizon and wanted to keep up her modeling training during the commute home or her opposable thumbs didn't work because her hands were empty...  Although the E train was severely delayed I was chuckling all the way down the platform.   

[RVL_Girl]

I would like to nominate Susan. Susan got on at Aberdeen Matawan and sat next to me across the aisle from her friends. She then proceeded to yell at her friend who was no more than 12 inches away from her face. The DD was relatively quiet and her voice actually echoed down the entire length of the car. I could feel it reverberating off the windowsill. She was chatting about her day at work at a level that could projection across a crowded theatre with no microphone. Everyone in the whole damn car turned in their seats to stare at her, it was that loud. The guy across from us actually flinched because he could hear her over his in-ear headphones. Some shushed and some cursed, but it was all lost on Susan, who was too busy swinging her cooler into my face. I stood up, and to my surprise, so did others. We got out and walked to different sections of the crowded train. As we left, her friend remarked "Susan, stop. You're scarring everyone." The only seat I could find was on the top level of the car. Funny, we can still hear her...

[craps]

(I hope this works - never tried to post an image here.)

My nominee for passenger of the week. This is yesterday's 6:03PM RVL. Sorry I couldn't take a more complete photo, but I didn't want to her to see me. Yes, those are bare feet on the seats.  Also, notice her bag taking another seat, for a grand total of 3 seats for one reasonably small person. To top it off, she blabbed on the phone in a foreign language for almost the whole ride. 

[jjostm]

I think she has a twin sister; I saw someone on the 5:54 NEC DD with the same posture. Lovely. Were these people raised in barns?

Although the feet on the seat thing is quite irksome, I'd like to nominate the guy in front of me on the same 5:54 DD yesterday. Not only did he have the worst pit odour I've smelled in quite some time, he felt the need to raise his arms while smelling like a hoagie. As soon as people got off at Metropark, I instantly moved away from Stinkmeister Flex...only to have him stand near my new seat to get off at Metuchen.

I mean, seriously, you can't tell me that you don't know that you smell like pit ass. Seriously. I was double and triple checking myself to make sure the deodourant was still working. Everyone has had those moments when they realise that they're less than fresh smelling. The first thing one does not do in that situation is broadcast their stank hither and yon by raising and stretchin your arms into the air.

UGH.

-j

[slavetothecommute]

Although the feet on the seat thing is quite irksome,

See, I think the feet on the seat thing has funny consequences that we don't get to see.  With god only knows what has been on those seats over the year, I'm taking an educated guess that every sort of microbiotic disease is on them.  Itchy feet to follow, hopefully.

[mhnj]

On the 6:13 NEC tonight, a guy in my car was having a loud phone fight with someone I assume was his wife. He was at least six rows behind me and I could actually hear her voice screaming on the other end of the phone. From what I could gather, It seems that he used to work at home, but now worked in the city, so now she had to do whatever chores he used to do, and she knew this was coming for months, and maybe he could find a job in NJ, and he did those chores for months and she's only had to do them for days, and who knows what else. One guy finally got up to leave the car and told him to keep it down. To the guy's credit, he said he was sorry and actually was much quieter after that. So then I only had to hear the guy playing the DVD movie without earphones.

[CrudeBoy]

I can top that. On the 5:20 M&E train to Dover last night, the gentleman (nicely attired and older) sitting at the window of a three seater. He was talking to another family member about Joe. It seems that Joe is either mentally ill, an Alzheimers patient, old, young, or some combination thereof. Joe has a problem, as everybody on the train learned, with sticking things in his penis. Our caller said he needed to make Pete and Irene aware of this and to look for the paraphernalia. Our caller also instructed Joe that he was not to touch the nurses' breasts, asses or other parts. He said that Joe insisted there was no problem with any of this and wondered why our dear caller was bringing it up. This went on for a good half-hour before our caller suddenly took notice of our frantic attempts to get him to cease his call.

Honorable mention goes to the cretin who was reading the Times across the a few rows up on the aisle, and rather than keeping the read sections on his lap, he placed them in the aisle. The result of this boorish behavior was that as people got off the train, his papers were scattered hither and yon throughout the car.

Additionally, the train had two, count 'em, two hot cars last night. What a truly terrible way to get the weekend started.