Every month in Mileposts there is a lovely little section that mentions etiquette for people riding the trains. Keeping your feet off the seat and to refrain from conversations on cell phones are almost always mentioned. Although I don’t think Mileposts has made note of it, nail clipping on the train is generally frowned upon, and seems to be a pretty big pet peeve of commuters. But what if you could do all of those things at once? You would probably be the most obnoxious train passenger ever. Sort of like this:

I’ve always wanted to do this on a train for quite a while, but timing was always difficult. Every time I’ve done a photo like this in the past, I would put my camera on 10 second delay, hit the shutter and run to the spot I needed to be in… relatively time consuming. However, I recently bought a wireless remote for my camera, and realized it would make my scheme a whole lot easier.

As my evening train arrived at Southeast last night, I quickly set the camera up on a tripod and took various pictures of myself in the train car. It took me about four minutes to get all of the photos. If it wasn’t for people liking the photo on twitter, I probably would never have posted it here, as I’m not tremendously happy with how it turned out.

I definitely want to attempt this again when I have the ability to take my time, not rushing through because the train is about to go into the yard. Plus, I think it is hard to notice in some of the pictures I am clipping my nails, and combing my hair. But for the most part, these are the obnoxious things we commuters tend to see every day. And for a couple of moments in time, I was that most obnoxious passenger.

One evening I was meeting a friend for dinner, so I took the train from White Plains to Grand Central (as opposed to my usual train, going in the opposite direction). The train was completely packed, just about every seat taken. That is, except for one three seater, where a woman had removed her shoes and was laying across the seats with a laptop. I disgustedly passed by her in search of a seat, but another woman was not content to ignore this idiot. I most certainly thought a fight was going to break out between the two women. The lady that was lying across the seats did actually sit up and move over, but I don’t think she realized what was so obnoxious about laying down on a full train.