Why is it that the first trip to the city after an extended break is an awful ride that makes you wish you were still away? Metro-North was perfectly grand this morning, the 8:43 out of Hawthorne getting in to GCT several minutes early.

I schlepped down to the 6 train below Grand Central. Within a few minutes, the man on the loudspeaker said the local was approaching 42nd.

The lights illuminated the tunnel off in the distance a moment later, and we climbed on board.

I had the iPod on at a very low volume. It was on Shuffle and I believe the song at that moment was Cake’s “Never There”, which would’ve been better suited for those mornings when the 6 is but a rumor.

Apparently the iPod was not on low enough. As the doors were about to close, I noticed a few dozen people remained on the platform, though the train was not full. I was about to ask a fellow rider if the train was going express, but the four people around me all had earphones on too–middle aged white woman with an iPod, black man with big DJ cans, 20something doofus guy and 30something white lady with iPods.

The doors shut and we were off.

The digital scoreboard on the train said the next stop was 33rd Street, so I put my express train fears aside. As we approached 33rd, the robot voice said the next stop was, indeed, 33rd.

Alas, we only slowed at 33rd and kept going.

I held out hope that we might stop at 28th–the next stop and, more importantly, my stop. The scoreboard shifted to 28th Street as the next stop, and the robot voice announced it as well.

No dice, we chugged along. And so went the pattern all the way to 14th: Orange letters, loudspeaker, and on through the next local stop. It was my own fault for not paying attention to any announcements, but I didn’t get much help from the fake 6 train’s orange updates, or the Mechanical Man on the Mike.

I jumped off at Union Square and waited impatiently for the next uptown 6.