So I decided since it’s been awhile I wanted to type up another story to share with all of you. One of the things that’s important to note is that when you’re traveling it’s sometimes hard to figure out how to get from place to place when you’re in an unfamiliar place. Even if you know the city to some degree each visit can require you to learn how to go places for the very first time and you’re not always going to get it right immediately.

This story takes place when I went to New York Comic Con in I think 2019. I was traveling with my wife and a mutual friend and something to note is that we’re from a very small town. We have very little in the way of public transportation so we definitely don’t have busses. We decided to save money to take a bus from the airport to the metro. While we understood how to use the metro none of us have used a bus before. We always took an uber to avoid long waits. We got metro cards for unlimited rides during the time we’re there so we don’t have to worry about how many trips we need to make, but we didn’t know where to scan the card upon entering the bus. So we had a brilliant idea to just watch the person in front of us and do what they do. Only they just walked in and we didn’t see anything. Being too awkward to ask we did the same.

When we arrived to the closest metro station we were immediately greeted by the police. My wife and I with one officer and my friend with two more. I realized very quickly what happened and so I explained we just didn’t know where to scan the card but we had it set for a few days. I guess I have one of those faces that screams either very honest or complete idiot, probably both in this case, but the officer spent very little time talking to us. Just asked what state we were from and why we were in NYC. My friend however, had a very different story.

Now my wife and I are standing there watching as the cops are asking question after question to my friend. It lasted for what felt like minutes before they let him go and he looked at us wide eyed. He was ok but very surprised at how many questions they had. They asked the same questions, but also asked him what he had on him, how long he was staying and just several things we were never asked. I’m glad he was fine but we learned very quickly how to use the bus for next time as we took the metro without incident to our destination.