Whenever possible, avoid rush hours on the subways in New York City if you’re a senior citizen!

One of the luxuries of retirement is that your schedule is much more flexible.  At the end of your day, you no longer need to stream out of a work place with hordes of other humans.  You no longer need to feel the press of humanity pouring into the bowels of the NYC subway system.  You can avoid the frenzy of the turnstiles and the packed platforms.  Most significantly, you can pass on the experience of being squeezed together like a sardine with sometimes smelly and occasionally rude people on a train that lurches or stalls.  Except when you can’t.

As luck would have it, I’m taking a terrific class in midtown this spring that regrettably meets from 2 until 5 pm.  So, once a week, I’m living all of the above subway experiences in the Times Square subway station and on the #2 Express or #1 Local trains uptown.

If there is ever a reason to stay as physically fit as possible after retirement, it’s for when you can’t avoid using the NYC subway system during rush hour.