Train Crossing

First week of school.  First office hours.  I get in the lane to turn onto the freeway ramp and it's closed.  Closed?  I glance at the freeway--a parking lot.  Now I'm going to be late.  I take the detour on the surface streets, which includes two train crossings.  I make it through the first one, but am caught by the second one.

This occurrence--the clanging of the bells, the lights flashing and the railroad crossing arms going down--used to drive me right up a wall.  Pat the steering wheel, check the time, crane my neck to see how long before the end was.   Then I decided that whether I freaked out about it, or was calm about it, that the train was going to do what it needed to do (go from Point A to Point B) and I could either adapt, or have a knot in my stomach.  Ever since that day, my fallback position when stopped by a crossing train is to open the window to listen, and take a moment to breathe.  Even if I was ten minutes late for office hours.  Which no one came to because it was the first week.

So, here for your boring pleasure, is one minute and 59 seconds of the train crossing this morning.  Watch this when you have a small boy nearby.  Or need to kill two minutes.  Or wonder at the massive miracle that is a train.