Grumblings and road stories from a day spent sitting on the Acela from Boston to New York to Boston.

• This morning, I decided to call a cab so that I'd make it on time for my 7:15 train--can't trust the MBTA. I told the cabbie to drive to South Station. He drove to the fucking airport instead. Once you take the wrong exit downtown, you're stuck in two miles of exitless tunnel. This was not satisfactory, so he had to eat the $4.50 cab toll back under Boston Harbor. I got to the station four minutes before the train left. At least I got to hear a story about the Somerville hopheads taking 24-hour cabs from hit to hit at 5:30am.
• In Connecticut, every other commercial buidling over two stories tall is a garage. Or at least half of it is a garage. In no other state in the Union are the failures of the automobile age more apparent...except maybe California.
• LOTS OF PEOPLE take the Acela trains. Even after they spent four months out of service due to brake problems a year ago, nearly every trip is sold out.
• How could Elvis Costello ever have topped his first three or four albums? I won't listening to anything more recent than 1982. I don't want to be let down.
• Some people claim to have 40-hour jobs. Are they telling the truth?
• On my trip "home" this week, I did not see EMTs picking bone fragments out of the railbed at Canton Junction after a mysterious fatality that was not covered in any local media.