Here the travel narrative becomes difficult to follow. Jenkins is as obsessed as ever with the logistics of planes, trains, and automobiles, but the rest of Buck\u2019s journey seems to take place in an alternate geography in which the subway goes all the way across New Jersey and the island of Manhattan is 30 miles long.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo cars in or out of the city yet, and even the trains have some kind of a complicated route that takes them around bad sites. \u2026 Some of the worst disasters in the city were the result of disappearing motormen and dispatchers. Six trains were involved in head-ons with lots of deaths. Several trains ran up the back of other ones. It\u2019ll be days before they clear all the tracks \u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is, of course, the last we hear about these \u201clots of deaths\u201d on the trains of New York. Buck\u2019s trip into the city will take him right by these sites of mass carnage (\u201clots\u201d here probably means not hundreds, but thousands), but he will be too busy writing his report on his laptop to look out the window and actually see any of this or to describe it for the reader.<\/p>\n
Someone identified only as \u201cpersonnel in Easton\u201d says he knows \u201ca guy that can get [Buck] within a couple of miles of the subway.\u201d Then, we\u2019re told, Buck pays a \u201cpremium for a ride close enough to the train that he could walk the rest of the way. \u2026 A two-mile walk got him to the train platform at about noon, only to find himself among the last half who had to wait another half an hour for the next train. The zigzag ride took two hours to get to Manhattan \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to make any sense of this. The\u00a0NYC subway\u00a0does not cross the Hudson, let alone extend all the way across New Jersey to Easton. You can\u2019t even get an Amtrak train in Easton. The nearest train to New York is probably NJ Transit\u2019s\u00a0Raritan Valley Line\u00a0\u2014 Easton is only 20 miles or so from the High Bridge station (why he\u2019d get dropped off two miles away is not explained).<\/p>\n
So Buck catches the train there and \u2014 despite a complicated, zig-zag alternative route, which I don\u2019t understand how a fixed rail train could take \u2014 gets to Manhattan in two hours. This is pretty amazing, considering that this train usually takes\u00a0more than<\/i>\u00a0two hours just to get to Newark, where you\u2019ve got to transfer to the Path to get into the city. So maybe Buck\u2019s premium cab ride actually took him all the way across New Jersey to within two miles of Penn Station in Newark?<\/p>\n
As difficult as that is to make sense of, what happens next is even more confusing. Buck gets off the train in Manhattan, from there: \u201cBuck calculated about a fifteen-mile walk to his office and another five to his apartment.\u201d The island of Manhattan is about 13 miles long and Penn Station is maybe three miles from the southern tip. So the\u00a0Global Weekly<\/i>\u00a0offices, apparently, are somewhere in the Bronx, and Buck\u2019s apartment is \u2014 who knows? New Rochelle, maybe?<\/p>\n
In any case, it\u2019s a heck of a walk. Despite his being \u201cin great shape,\u201d Buck is soon sweating and panting.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, God , help me,\u201d Buck breathed, more exasperated than praying. But if there was a God, he decided, God had a sense of humor. Leaning against a brick wall in an alley in plain sight was a yellow bicycle with a cardboard sign clipped to it. It read, \u201cBorrow this bike. Take it where you like. Leave it for someone else in need. No charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only in New York,<\/i>\u00a0he thought.\u00a0Nobody steals something that\u2019s free.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The ad hoc cardboard sign here suggests that this bike isn\u2019t actually part of a formal community bike program \u2014 that L&J intend it as a sign from God, an answer to Buck\u2019s exasperated prayer.<\/p>\n
Buck has already stood unscathed at ground zero as millions of kilotons of nuclear weapons exploded over his head, so it\u2019s no surprise that he is unimpressed by the timely convenience of this bit of divine providence: \u201cHe thought about breathing a prayer of thanks, but somehow the world he was looking at didn\u2019t show any other evidence of a benevolent Creator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aboard this karmic two-wheeler, Buck soon \u201ccruised into midtown between the snarl of wreckage and wreckers.\u201d So he gets off the train at Penn Station, walks for many miles, rides a bike several more miles, then arrives in midtown Manhattan. In the geography of\u00a0LB<\/i>, Manhattan is a Moebius strip or an Escher staircase.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the geography of “Left Behind,” the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":67431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
LBCF: If you can make it there<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the geography of "Left Behind," the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LBCF: If you can make it there\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the geography of "Left Behind," the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-12-13T20:32:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2024\/06\/WWB-1.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"258\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"385\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/\",\"name\":\"LBCF: If you can make it there\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-12-13T20:32:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-12-13T20:32:15+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"In the geography of \\\"Left Behind,\\\" the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"LBCF: If you can make it there\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"LBCF: If you can make it there","description":"In the geography of \"Left Behind,\" the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"LBCF: If you can make it there","og_description":"In the geography of \"Left Behind,\" the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2024-12-13T20:32:15+00:00","og_image":[{"width":258,"height":385,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2024\/06\/WWB-1.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/","name":"LBCF: If you can make it there","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2024-12-13T20:32:15+00:00","dateModified":"2024-12-13T20:32:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"In the geography of \"Left Behind,\" the island of Manhattan stretches beyond Connecticut, then folds back in on itself like an Escher staircase.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2024\/12\/13\/lbcf-if-you-can-make-it-there\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"LBCF: If you can make it there"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2024\/12\/Cobb.jpeg\")