The subway in New York is an amazing thing. When I first moved here, it took me a while to start using it. I didn’t know where I was going and it seemed complicated. But once I started using it, I was hooked. It is so incredibly fast and economical. Except in the summer where it is about 20 degrees hotter than outside and feels like an oven. In the summer, I resorted to taking the bus.

I learned that you can’t really people watch on the subway. I tried early on and a guy across me in the car caught my eye and smiled. Being from California and all, I smiled back. Of course this then led to a conversation. He was a cop, coming off his shift blah, blah. Right as he started asking me what I do for fun, fortunately, I had to get off. That experience made me focus on my little Treo and play games on it or read while listening to my iPod. Oh, talking about iPods — every other person on the subway has one. One day, I counted more than 15 people in the car had one.

But the subway can be very entertaining. The other day, during rush hour, the car doors closed and right as they closed a guy on the platform ran up to the door and started knocking incessantly. Everyone just looked at him like “Dude, what are you doing? We can’t open the door for you!” and then burst out laughing. Subway bonding.