Disrupting D.C.

When I first planned my Washington D.C. trip in December, the first thing that I did was informing my cousin Ananda about it since he lives in the suburbs of D.C. On emailing him, I found that D.C. and surrounding areas are buried under unprecedented amount of snow. Over the winter, as my plans took shape, the the intensity of snowstorms increased as well.

These two things are unrelated, you say? Then listen to this.

I booked my bus tickets to D.C. last weekend and then checked the weather for this week. The weekend showed heavy rain. Lately Weather.com has been exceptionally consistent in the inaccuracy of their forecasts and I planned my trip based on the assumption that they would be wrong this time too. Not this weekend. I arrived in Washington D.C. on Friday evening in the midst of a torrential downpour.

Undaunted by the rain, I dragged my suitcase underground and boarded the first Red Line train leaving for the suburbs where my cousin would be waiting. The train stopped two stations short of my destination.

"This train is now out of service. All passengers must exit." said a female voice.

I exited and waited for the next train which arrived in ten minutes or so. I had hardly settled down in the train when I noticed that its doors had not closed yet. And then the same announcement came. In the same female voice. All passengers got off again and the empty train thundered away. There was a power failure in one of the stations and metro services were disrupted.

Eventually a train managed to take me to my destination without going "out of service" midway. My cousin boarded the same train and we both alighted at a station near his house. When entering his house we saw a notice on the door: "Water supply will be cut off in the housing complex on Tuesday 16th March from 8:00 am until repair is completed." It seemed wherever I went, things were falling out of place. But the final blow was yet to come.

Early next morning, we woke up to discover that we did not have any Internet connection or cable TV. A call to the customer service confirmed that their technicians were working on that issue, but we did not get the TV or Internet services till late in the evening. The rain continued throughout the day.

And once restored, the Internet confirmed my worst suspicions. Weather.com was indeed wrong in its prediction when it said the week would be sunny. Now the new prediction was a rainy Monday and cloudy Tuesday as well.

I wonder how long I'll have to wait before the CIA rounds me up for disrupting life in the capital.