parts of a piece

My alarm clock is set for 5:58AM and normally I awake at that time to the radio having come on. I listen for a short spell and by 6:03 I'm thinking that if I get out of bed now, my morning routine will be significantly less stressed, what, with having to wake the kids, make their lunches, get them packed and dressed, make my own lunch, feed us all breakfast and so on.

Well, invariably I fall back asleep and lose thirty minutes, awaking again at 6:33. Now I have to jump out of bed, move quickly, wake the kids aggressively, speed through lunch making and rush to get the kids to the bus stop.

Whether I get out of bed at 6:03 or 6:33, the kids' bus picks them up at 7:15 two blocks away. It seems silly, but I drive them to their bus stop. By doing this it allows me to leave to go to work directly from the bus stop. I arrive at the train station between 7:21 and 7:23. If it is the former, I can leisurely walk from the parking to the train station to catch the train at 7:27. If it is the latter, I have to rush, and I end up arriving at the platform of the train at about the same time as the train.

On the train I never have trouble finding a seat; the train is perhaps 60-70% full by the time the train arrives at my station, in terms of occupied seats. Some days I will walk to the second railcar from the front immediately and find a seat there. Other days I don't bother. Where I get off the train the platform has us all walking to and past the front of the train to pass through the station. The platform is perhaps twelve feet wide, and the doorway to get into the station is perhaps nine feet wide. This causes a slowdown of people walking to leave the platform to get through the station on their way to where they are going. This is why I would occasionally get off the train closer to the front - among the first 50 or 100 people getting off, the density of walkers is not such that there is any slowdown.

From the station I walk, about eleven minutes, to work. I take mostly the same route to work in the morning. When I arrive at my building I have the choice to take the elevator or the stairs. I mostly take the stairs (there are 94 of them) but occasionally when I am feeling particularly lethargic because of a number of consecutive late nights, I bow down to ease and convenience.