Stranded!

Three years ago, nearly two feet of snow fell in New York City, in a blizzard of historic proportions.
As fate would have it, I was right in the middle of it. Here's the story.
I am fortunate enough to be employed as a sales manager for a big company that has a skybox suite at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It's used to entertain our biggest clients. The sales pros are free to invite their customers for most of the events that are held at the Garden, from the New York Knicks to Elton John and everything in between, including professional wrestling, which my son and I are fans of.

There's much demand for tickets for most events, but wrestling isn't the most popular event on the list. As it's a requirement that a manager attend all events, I am usually the only one who actually wants to help host the wrestling events and be the required managerial presence.
 I had agreed to host the event which was to be held at 7:30 on on 12-26-2010. No other folks from my company would be attending. I think about 6 people were scheduled to attend as my company's guests.
As the fates would have it, the weatherman were predicting an all out blizzard for that day and for once, they got it right. By the time we drove to the parking lot of the train station late that  afternoon, it was already snowing, and snowing hard. Under any other circumstances, I would not have ventured out beyond my own driveway, but I had made a commitment to host the event and I had a responsibility to fufill that promise.
We did pack the car with snow shovels and extra clothing and gear, but we traveled light on the train, since we would be indoors while traveling, the whole time. The train takes you right underneath MSG. We made it to the Garden on schedule, with few issues.

The wrestling event itself was mediocre at best, as the wrestlers themselves were distracted by the thought of not knowing how they were going to get to their next destination later that evening. Only 2 customers showed up, leaving the four of us to try and eat enough food to feed a dozen people. The 2 customers left before the event was over, worried about getting home. My son and I stayed till the end, probably about 10:30. Before we left, I stuffed a few leftover cookies into the pockets of my winter coat.
We got our first glimpse of what was going on outside as we left the Garden and got on the train from NYC's
Penn Station to Newark's Penn Station. From the windows looking out of MSG, it looked insane outside. At Newark Penn station, we could take the train that would bring us back to our car. Or so we thought.

The train ride from NYC to Newark went remarkably well, and we immediately went to the information booth to find out when the next train was back to the Somerville, NJ station, where our car was parked. Pandemonium was already underfoot, and I saw  a lot of fellow train riders with worried looks on their faces. The attendant at the information gave us the bad news. The storm was already so bad that ALL trains out of Newark were cancelled. Period. We had no transportation alternatives out of Newark. It was a little before 11PM and we were stranded.

To be continued.