05.03.04

Knowing that i would snooze the alarm over and over again till i was late, i left it on the floor next to bathroom door rather than placing it on my bedside table. It rang dutifully at 5 a.m.

I showered, shaved and ironed my pants for the day. I packed up my computer and was out the door at exactly 6:06 a.m. to catch the Metro 50 off 43rd and Costa Rica. The neighborhood was of course, quiet. There was no breeze, but it was unseasonably cool; the sky was dark blue. I could hear an occasional bird off in the distance, but it was otherwise silent. I As i turned the corner onto Georgi, i could see the first couple of students being dropped off at Scarborough High School. A round hispanic girl kissed her mother goodbye and stepped out of a late model chevy cavalier enveloped by this mornings darkness. The car pulled away from the edge of the black iron gates that surround the school with a sharp u-turn, swinging it's headlights across the street in front of me.

One minute, and 40 seconds.

I made my way down Costa Rica in a little over four minutes and sat on the cement bench and waiting for the bus. This was, in essence, a crap shoot. A couple of weeks before i had bought the house, i had looked on metro's website for the 50 route. Apparently, there are three different 50's: one hits the HOV lane, one takes all the little backroads and one is a special school route (or some variation of the two previous routes.)

The time 6:15 a.m. was stuck in my head. So i waited only 2 minutes for the bus. It arrived at
6:13. I was downtown at exactly 7:00 -- just as the train was pulling away from the station.

I sat at the station and waited for the next train to arrive. downtown was quiet and wet. There were yellow vested city workers spraying down the bird shit off the sidewalks and the train stops.

The train pulled into the station with a surprisingly large load of passengers at approximately 7:12 (right on time).

I arrived at the medical center at 7:26 and walked into MDACC at 7:30.