I've got a real thing for tunnels. Not a small thing, either. What I have is a great big oversized granddaddy tunnel jones.
I really don't know why that is. All I know is that I've loved tunnels ever since I was small. On long car trips when I was a kid, I would look forward to going through the tunnels along the way almost more than I'd look forward to getting wherever it was we were going. One of the most blissful experiences I've had as an adult was when I was driving by myself west from Denver on I-70 and entered the Eisenhower tunnel—a two-mile bore carved straight through the Colorado Rockies at an elevation of almost 12,000 feet. What a rush! I don't know if it's some weird birth-canal identification or what. I just know that nothing delights me like a tunnel.
My cousin Linda's husband Devin has a strange thing for tunnels, too, but his thing is different from mine. He likes to hold his breath as he drives through tunnels, and he tries to get everyone else in the car to do the same thing. So there you are, tooling around San Francisco in Devin's Blazer, and along comes a tunnel, and Devin says, "Okay, hold your breath!" and everyone starts turning red as the tunnel stretches on and on, and Linda is saying, "Devin, stop it!" and one by one the passengers give up and the breath comes bursting out of them, but Devin is still holding his and turning redder and redder and redder and Linda is slapping him on the arm and we're only thirty yards from the end of the tunnel now and we're all afraid that Devin will pass out right there in the driver's seat and then we're out of the tunnel and Devin let's out his breath and grins and everything is okay, except for Linda who can't believe how childish her husband is. Devin is a corporate attorney.
If you're like me and Devin and you can't get enough of those fascinating tunnels, and you ever happen to be in New York City, have I got an idea for you. Get on the nearest subway train. It only costs a dollar fifty—and thanks to the generosity of Governor Pataki, if you buy ten fares with your Metro card, you get an eleventh fare for free!
Anyway, what you want to do is go to the very front of the subway train and board the first car. (By the way, this works best very early in the morning, when no one else is on the train, but you can do it most any time of day if you don't care about looking a little silly.) Now that you're on the first car, go all the way to the front of the car where there's a window looking straight out at the track ahead. The engineer's compartment on most subway trains is a little niche tucked off to the side of the car, so there won't be anything in your way as you stand there and watch the tunnel unfurl ahead of you.
You can watch the tunnel rise and dip, watch it twist and curve and straighten out again, watch it widen out and narrow again, try to decipher the arcane mileposts and traffic lights as they screech by, wonder at the side passages and staircases you see half-hidden in the rushing darkness, and watch the bright train stations ahead as they expand like birthing stars and engulf you.
All in all, it's the best entertainment you can get in the city for only twelve bits. There's just one thing that would make it better—watching Devin try to hold his breath on the "F" train.
