We’re launching Season Four this Thursday! To kick it off, I share the unforeseen complications that happened on the way to NYC to celebrate our Signal Award win. Exploding transformers, train trauma bonding, shouting expletives in a public setting, free peanut M&Ms, the love of friends, and the kindness of strangers all make an appearance. As always, what we don’t expect often leads to the most memorable stories!
We’re launching Season Four this Thursday! To kick it off, I share the unforeseen complications that happened on the way to NYC to celebrate our Signal Award win. Exploding transformers, train trauma bonding, shouting expletives in a public setting, free peanut M&Ms, the love of friends, and the kindness of strangers all make an appearance. As always, what we don’t expect often leads to the most memorable stories!
Tricia (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome to the show. I need to give you a follow up and a heads up. So the last time you heard from us was like in October and we had just been nominated for a Signal Award in the arts and culture category. And as it turned out, we actually won said Signal Award, yay! We won a silver in the arts and culture category. Again, I just keep saying along with Oprah who won a gold. Instead of having like an award ceremony, they were having a big party, they being the Signal Award, was having a big party in New York, in Brooklyn, to celebrate all of the winners. And I thought, well, we just have to go. And I was allowed to invite three other people. So it was me, my producer, Adam. Hello. Yeah, I was going to say, say hello, Adam. Adam's dear friend from New Jersey. And if you're a longtime listener to the show, Mia Rovegno who was an executive producer right when we started. And I was going to hook up with my good friend, Catherine Burns, who you've heard on the show also. Season one, episode three, former artistic director of The Moth. We were all gonna gather, have a big time. I bought myself a snazzy gold skirt because I wanted to look, you know, kind of sharp. And I was looking very forward to like mingling with the other award winners and doing some networking and, you know, doing the thing down in New York and excited that we won an award. Now I was also traveling later that weekend. And so I thought, you know, just to go easy on my nerves, I think what I'll do is blow my wad and I will pay for a ticket from Boston to New York on the Amtrak Acela which is a fabulous way to travel. It's very chill. You get on in Boston. It's a very fast train. You can do all this work. So it's gonna prep about all the people I was gonna meet that night and get ready for this event. And then was gonna get to Penn Station, and I was gonna make my way to Brooklyn, where I hadn't been in 30 years since I went to the River Cafe with my mother, and loads of time to go to the hotel and get all sparkly and make my way and meet Adam there and Mia there and Catherine there, we all have a big time. And so everything is going very smoothly until 13 minutes outside of Penn Station, the train stops.
Adam (02:49)
I'm sure that there's not a single person listening to this who thought this is gonna end well. I think that anytime that you're like, so I took extra precaution to make sure that all things went well. I don't think anybody's like, this must have turned out great. She's gonna tell us about it on the podcast. The dread I feel like in every single person listening right now in their stomach is just like,
Tricia (02:53)
Yeah
How right you are, Adam!
Adam (03:16)
Something's gonna go real wrong.
Tricia (03:19)
Well, and also what's great is that I had dear friends of mine who live in Tampa and they were like, we think today's the award ceremony. We're thinking of you. So there's a text chain that's going of people who are supporting me in this effort. So when the train stops 13 minutes outside of New York, I send a little text to them and say, Hey, little blip. Why don't you send me some prayers? Cause it seems like the train has stopped. So as it turns out, A transformer in the Bronx, apparently, at a substation, blew up and we lost power. There were flames involved. You know, nobody was hurt, but it was a deal. And so Amtrak, because they wanted to keep us all informed, begins to text us. And so they text us and they say, we're going to push you in to Penn Station. And we're like, that seems like it makes all kinds of sense. That seems like a good plan. And then they send us a text right after it was saying, we can't do that because there are wires down on the track. And so, you know, things get a little bit dicey. I am in the quiet car and I make the choice to move to the cafe car because I'm pretty sure I can't be quiet with what's about to unfold. So I moved to the cafe car and they just keep sending us all of these texts. I mean, all of these texts about things that they're gonna do. In their heart, they want to do them, but they actually just never come true. And so time is ticking we're like now two and a half hours into this. And so then they sent us a text that says that they are pushing the train back to New Rochelle. And I say, BLEEP me at the top of my lungs and collapse in a little heap and start crying. And a man comes up to me and says, are you okay? And I say, no. I have been working my ass off for three years on this show and I'm about to get an award and I can't get there. And then I apologized to the rest of the train car who heard me scream at the top of my lungs, BLEEP And they said, don't worry about it. We all wanted to say the same thing. You were just speaking for the rest of us. So here we all are huddled in the cafe car and this young man, I'm gonna call him Steve. And I said, Steve, can I just hang with you? Cause I just, I'm at a loss. I don't know what to do. And Steve was like, I'm with you. Actually, New Rochelle may be the best choice for you because then you can just take an Uber. So we're all planning how New Rochelle is a good thing to do. And of course we get another thing that says they are not gonna push us back to New Rochelle. We're just sort of stuck in limbo. In the meantime, I have texts from Adam, Mia, Catherine, all of my friends in Tampa. They start sending me like the news clips. So like you're on the national news and there's pictures of like fire at the Bronx station. And I'm like trapped in the cafe car with like, it's dark now, it's starting to get dark. Then we look, it's not all the way dark it's just dusk. And we look out the window and we see a guy who has jumped off the train and is scaling a, I'm going to say a 12 foot high chain link fence, jumping over it, running through the woods onto a golf course. So Steve, the guy who said he was gonna take care of me, looks at me and goes, I love you, Tricia but I'm outta here. He grabs his friend. They're scaling. I was so close to going with them, but I thought if I jumped off the train, I would break an ankle. Because you're like, you know, if you're stopped, you're like four or five, like we're stopped in the middle of nowhere, and you're four or five feet up in the air, right? And I thought, I'm gonna break something. This has bad news written all over it. Meantime, there's this lovely woman behind the counter that works for Amtrak who's just feeding us all the free food that she possibly can, like peanut M &Ms. I mean, just throwing food. In the end, we were trapped on the train for five hours. My event is from six to eight. We get pushed into Penn Station at quarter till eight. In the meantime, Adam is like, where are you again? I know, it was just so bad. We were pushed into the train station at quarter till eight. I'm sure I should take a train to Brooklyn, but I'm traumatized being underground. I go out. I don't even, at this point, don't even know how to call a Lyft I just fall into this cab and this sweet man goes, I said, I'd like to go to 233 Brooklyn street. And he said, my gosh, you are a gift from God. And I said, work with me. I have been trapped on a train for five hours. How am I a gift from God? He said, I've been praying, you're the last prayer of the evening and I've been praying all night long that God would send me a fare that was right next to my house and you're two blocks away. So I'm like, okay, it's all coming together. So the man takes me to the event where Adam has heroically been trying to keep the photo booth open so I can at least get a photograph not in my snazzy gold skirt.
Adam (08:35)
I don't even know if I could say that I was successful. I mean, I was successful to a point where I just kept stalling and stalling. You stalled I was thinking of all of the horrible things that I could say to be like, well, she... Just some sort of horrible sob story, just to guilt them into keeping the photo booth open.
Tricia (08:43)
Well, as it turned out, because I got there at 8.20, the bar was shut, most everybody was gone. They told us we had to leave. Adam was valiantly, you know, hanging on, like trying to keep the doors open to the photo booth. As it turns out, the woman who runs the Signal Awards is a former Moth employee. Catherine Burns was able to reach out to her and say, don't you dare shut that photo booth. And so we have, you know, between Adam and Catherine, I have one like photo of me holding this award.
Adam (09:27)
No, no, no, you would never know. You would never know from the photo. You're a calm, collected...
Tricia (09:31)
Looking like the dog's lunch. Looking a little bit like the dog's lunch. So Adam, people took me to dinner. I got to see you for maybe 20 minutes Adam. You had to go back to New Jersey. It was a big 20 minutes. So anyway, so there I was wanting my evening in the limelight or whatever. Sadly, none of that happened, but I was surrounded by lovely people. We had a lovely dinner and I woke up the next morning and my train was canceled and we had to do that all over again.
Adam (09:42)
Powerful 20 minutes though.
Tricia (10:01)
But here's the thing that is really wonderful. Fast forward five weeks, and I hadn't really told this story and I couldn't figure out why I hadn't told the story. And it was because, you know, I just didn't know. five weeks later, I'm on the exact same train and I'm going down to New York and I don't even wear the same clothes because I don't want to have anything simulate the experience. Like I'm in different clothes and I get on the train and I think like it's like a like an airplane, like you have a different pilot and you have different stewardesses, but in trains, like they have a route. So like I get on the train and it's the exact same conductor and it's the exact same engineer and I will not make eye contact with them because I'm like, my God, it's just gonna happen all over again. And so we're on the train and for a moment we stopped for 10 minutes because they say we have a problem with the electrical door. And I was like, dear God. I mean, I just couldn't even. But we get past it and I'm like, that was too much. I have to go get a cup of tea. And I go in the back and the exact same woman is there behind the counter at the Amtrak coffee car. And I see her and she looks at me and she says, did you get your award? And it was the sweetest moment. We had all this trauma bonding. She said she'd never seen anything like it in her 17 years. She had the video of people leaping over the fence and she said, and that man who said he'd stay with you and he just left you like all men. She still gave me some free M&Ms I mean, was just the, her name was Selema. She is wonderful. She's on the 11:17 from Boston to New York. If you ever get on that train, tell her I said hello. And she looked at the picture of me and she said, well, you don't look like you've been traumatized. No, she said, you don't look like you've been terrorized for five hours in the shot. that was the story. So we won the award. We didn't quite make it to the event. Some of us. Some- yes, made it. I was there. had a great time. Did you have fun?
Adam (12:13)
Yeah, I represented. I held it down for us. I was there.
Tricia (12:17)
You spread the gospel. You spread the no time to be timid gospel. And so now that was the end of season three and we are about to launch season four in just a couple days. We can't wait to launch that. We're all very excited. So we want you to tune in. It's to be a great season. We've got all sorts of new surprises. So make sure you tune in. Thanks for being such loyal listeners and see you on March 20th when we launch season four. And remember. This is no time to be timid.
Learn more about No Time to Be Timid at my website, triciaroseburt.com and make sure to follow me on social media @triciaroseburt. No Time to Be Timid is sponsored by Interabang Books, a Dallas-based independent bookstore, which was named one of the top five bookstores in the country. They have a fabulous curated online collection. Check them out at interabangbooks.com. That's Interabang, I N T E R A B A N G books.com
No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Trisha Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch. And our theme music is Twist and Turns by the Paul Dunlea Group. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show, spread the word, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of I Will Be Good Productions.