Guess who just walked over the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time in her life?

Yeah, that would be me. My company supposedly had vans tonight, but we waited and waited and waited and they never showed. So myself and two coworkers tried to hail several cabs, but they all refused (illegally) to take us to Brooklyn, except for one that wanted to charge us $20 each. So finally, I found a woman who was going to walk across the Bridge. It was really pretty, and we were walking so fast I eventually had to remove my hat, gloves, scarf (and unzip my puffy down coat). Red Cross workers at the end were handing out coffee and hot chocolate.

Earlier this morning, I wandered around for a while looking for the shuttle that was supposedly going to take me to work, but then a big van pulled up and a girl in a pink velour tracksuit yelled "need a ride?" So I hopped in with a bunch of other Brooklynites and they took us across the bridge for $5, but for some reason they took the Manhattan Bridge and then just dropped us off in Chinatown. So I still had a long walk down to the bottom of Manhattan, but it wasn't that bad, and it was something of an adventure. I saw that there were some busses running, apparently driven by policemen.

Anyway, hopefully the transit workers get a fair deal out of this. I worry that people don't sympathize as much with unions as they used to, and we're hearing a lot in the media coverage from irate commuters, stranded shoppers, poor people who can't get to work, etc.