transit skills

sic

...but with cups of coffee.

(left elbow hooked around pole, if you must)

This is only really feasible at the expense of hogging an upright grabby-pole, and it can only really be done during the latter half of the week. You'll need an Arts section thick enough to fold down into a fairly rigid quarter-size block. You'll also need a pen drippy enough to mark without much pressure being applied. Hold the coffee in your left hand, then extend your thumb and use it to squinch the paper in. Holding the paper at an appropriate angle will mean rotating the coffee to a non-upright angle, so you're going to either need to drink a bunch of coffee straight-off or invest in a travel mug (better for paper-support squinching). Extend that paper/coffee arm to one side of an upright grabby-pole. Hold the pen in the other hand and wrap around from the other side of the pole. Totally awkward, and possibly inviting a lawsuit when you accidentally twitch out and splash hot coffee all over someone's face, but it's doable. Alternately, if you think you're super-awesome, you can surf freehand using the same technique, and count on you lightning-fast reflexes to get the pen-hand to a pole in case of sudden jolts.

i have just physically re-enacted all of these suggestions and i can't get any of them to work with both a full cup of coffee and enough purchase/bear-down power for a ballpoint pen. the travel mug sounds like the most sensible idea so far, taking the angle of coffee cup and related spillage concerns out of the equation entirely.

(professional subway-surfer in closed car)

Simple: the crossword puzzle is printed on the coffee cup. Left hand holds coffee cup/crossword, right hand holds pen.

XP to Nitsuh: Haha. No, I just want what I want WHEN I want it, and I treasure the smoke/drink/read combination.

Toned-up thumb, ring finger and pinkie hold coffee, cigarette is between index and middle finger, book is in other hand but toned-up thumb, ring finger and pinkie hold coffee, phone is in other hand cradled between palm and pinkie/ring finger, cigarette is between index and middle finger. Since you have no intention of listening to all the jabber of the caller, you take a drag whenever you please and say, "Oh really?" when you return the phone to your ear.

M White, your positioning makes perfect sense EXCEPT in Fig 1 my fingers 2 & 3 are almost too short to project past the side of coffee cup, so I have to really contort to get my mouth on the cig. I do it this way anyway, but I was hoping for a better solution. In Fig 2 involving the phone, you're still making perfect sense EXCEPT I'm always afraid the lit cigarette is going to end up in my hair when the wind blows.

Steve Shasta

Mike!? Anyway, therein lies the problem. I haven't got a Jeeves yet.

As to the original question, according to some, the solution lies in ousting a pregnant woman from her seat.

that is all.

You need BIKE RACKS on the front of the train. Like the bike racks on the front of our buses.

I am brushing on my transit & bus riding skills as I'm imprisoned in a cast for at least the next month & can't drive. Heh, so I have been doing the "I'm in a walking cast but can't walk and take 10 minutes to get up the bus stairs" thing. (Next time, my left leg is going down, then I could hobble to the privacy of my car.)

and coffee-drinking is illegal on nyc transit, you anarchist.

also, with book, you can keep cig in book hand (for me my book hand is my left). thumb keeping pages seperated, pinky & ring supporting back cover, very base of middle and index (which jut outward) supporting front cover, cig between middle and index. then you pull yr. hand tight, forcing covers together (& keeping thumb in place to hold page) and take a drag of cig, then open out hand again.

Lose the extending leash and get one with an ordinary handle that you can loop around your wrist. I hate those extender leashes for exactly that reason. Also because the dog keeps getting tangled up in things, which means you have to put your beer down.

http://www.islandtailwaggers.com/leash.html

So when I'm holding too much stuff, I just clip the end of the leash around my bag handle or a belt loop or anything.

Interesting would be one word for it.