totient | day trip to New York

My cousin Lorna just graduated from UMich's musical theatre program and took an understudy role in Dear Evan Hansen. Yesterday was the main Alana's first day off since then and the theatre is right around the corner from the Port Authority so I booked bus tickets to New York leaving Boston at noon and leaving the Port Authority a little after midnight. I planned to meet up with a bunch of other family at a diner in between the Port Authority and the theatre around 5:00, and fortunately Lorna's call was late enough that I didn't miss her when the bus down left half an hour late. After dinner, with Lorna off to get ready, we all went to City Kitchen for dessert and just as we were leaving the fire alarms went off, and the traffic lights at one end of the block were out, and some but not all of the other lights in the area too. I picked up my will call ticket around 7:15 and hung out in the line with my family until 7:30 when the house was supposed to open, and then until 7:45 when we got a text back from Lorna that they were working on getting a generator going, and then until 8:15 when the house manager came out to say that for the first time in the 30 years he'd been there, the show was not going to go on.

Meanwhile we'd heard that the outage extended many blocks north and west (but hardly at all south and east) from where we were, and also rumors of a fire at the Port Authority, and I got an email from Greyhound saying to call them about my bus. I tried doing that but had very little signal (perhaps some of the nearby towers were down, or perhaps everyone was trying to use them) and couldn't hear what they had to say. The police closed the street for crowding and encouraged people to disperse and most folks did, but we waited for Lorna to come out of the stage door, which she did holding her phone for a flashlight. Some folks from CBS radio interviewed her, and later some CBS TV folks did the same. I headed back to my aunt's house to get some phone coverage before the TV interview so I could figure out what was up with my bus, and because she was the family member present with a spare bed in case it came to that. The buses did turn out to be running, so I headed back across town to get to mine. The fire rumors turned out to just be false fire alarms. While I was waiting to board another fire alarm (or maybe two) went off and everyone just ignored it, which seemed kind of sketchy to me, but then again this is the Port Authority we're talking about. I did manage to get a bit of sleep on the bus, and a bunch more once I got home (4:30 is a little late for me but not all *that* late).

I hope Lorna has a better experience at her next Broadway debut. It looks like that will be a Tuesday, so I don't know if I'll be able to make it. But we all got a hell of a story out of it.