GETTING WHERE?(The Talk of the Town)(transit strike, New York City)

And on the second day spam arrived. It read, "New Meditation CDs Equip Professionals Around the World to Conquer Daily Tasks with Zeal and Confidence." Glad to hear it, but this did not address the problem of getting to and from work. If meditation had wheels and could sneak through checkpoints--if it could fit four--surely people would be taking it to the office. Otherwise, forget it. Thirty hours into the transit strike, the first here in twenty-five years, zeal and confidence, in abundance at the beginning, had already started to fade. Conveyance-deprivation was by then a numbing fact, along with cold air and the realization that for a while--there was a sense, in the early stages, that it might last weeks, rather than days--nearly every conversation would begin more or less the same way.

Breathe deep. "Sunnyside, Queens, to Wall Street. It took me two hours. I got to work at ten and left an hour ago, at four. I've had a hard day, man." This one was a stockbroker, riding back up Madison Avenue, toward the Queensborough Bridge, on a device called the Trikke, a sort of V-shaped Siamese scooter with three wheels and swivelling action. "It sucks for going uphill," he said, polyurethane wheels clattering along the pocked and rutted avenue.

Madison, like Fifth, was closed to regular traffic, to make way for emergency vehicles and shuttle buses, but an ad-hoc pack of self-propelled vehicles had formed. They pulled up alongside one another when the signals went red; brief what's-your-situation dialogues sprouted up, and then the light changed, and the riders--several bicyclists, a couple of Rollerbladers, two pedicabbies, the Trikker--wished each other luck and pushed on, at varying speeds. On the downhills, the bladers caught up to the bikers. Over time, the pedicabs fell far behind. You could get around.

Earlier, the empty avenues had been lovely to behold, as on a snow day. But then it got dark, and the evening commute kicked in. The march home turned grim, the exhilaration of an extraordinary event giving way to doggedness and resignation. It was the second-shortest day ...