Typically, people leave town as a means to relax and unwind. As my luck would have it, though, I’m not that typical.

My whole day stems from today’s bombing of several stations in London’s Underground system. I awoke at 6:20 or so, intent on putting my overnight wash load into the dryer, and then going back to bed for half an hour. I passed by my computer on the way there, and saw an instant message from the mate.

“Are you there?”
I responded and that’s when I heard about the bombings. Immediately, I covered the incident at my new blog project, DC Navigator. It’s been a couple of hours since the last update, so I need to check back on that soon.

But I digress. Metro, in response, “escalated” its police presence throughout the system, though I get the impression they didn’t exactly come through on that. I saw one police officer at Union Station… and that’s it.

I headed into work for a couple of hours. By the time I left, the terror threat level for all forms of mass transit was raised to “code orange.” Because we all know how effective the color code system is.

I was scheduled to catch a train to Philly at 2:05 this afternoon. I got to the station almost an hour early. I thought I was golden — I had enough time to have a quick lunch and ascertain a prime boarding spot for myself. Couldn’t have been simpler… until this announcement:

“Please have your ticket and photo ID ready before boarding. Your ticket must have your name and only your name on it. If it doesn’t, you will be turned away.”

And my ticket had the mate’s name, and only the mate’s name, on it as he purchased it for me on Monday. Argh.

I headed to the ticket counter to resolve it. After dealing with two people, I got nowhere, and I wasn’t going to get amywhere until I did some financial finagling (sp?) to buy a new ticket and have the old one refunded.

Fortunately, the third time was a charm, and I got a ticket agent to help me with that. I literally had a minute left before the train’s scheduled departure, and I made sure the agent promised me that if I missed the train, I’d be put on the next available one.

With seconds to spare, I made it back to the gate. As it turned out, I had several minutes to spare — the train left more than 20 minutes late. Such is my traveling luck.

Which brings me to now. I’m somewhere between Baltimore, Md., and Wilmington, Del. As long as it doesn’t rain when I’m in Philly like it did last time, I’ll be fine.

Oh, wait…. Hi, Cindy!