Riding the rails sans pants

This past weekend was the 11th Annual No Pants Subway Ride in New York. It's an event that was started by Improv Everywhere, which is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Other cities were encouraged to organize rides of their own, it didn't matter if they didn't have a subway; it could be done on a train, a bus, or any other form of public transportation. In the past couple of years, I've become less shy and have come to embrace the ideology that if there is an interesting event that I'd like to partake in and it can't be found in my city, then I shall either travel to said event or create my own (see Thrill The World Miami). Since one of my resolutions this year was to be a little more fearless and try new things, well, then, I guess I was going to try to get a No Pants Metro Rail ride going!

This past Saturday was D-day, or in this case, I guess you could say U-day (underwear). I grabbed a helpful friend to take pictures and babysit me, in the event that none of the other 18 people that RSVP'd on the Facebook Event Page showed up. We got to the meeting spot and waited about 20 minutes.

Crickets.

Do I know my fellow Miamians or what? ...that's exactly what happened...no one showed. Fortunately I had already resigned myself to the fact that most Miamians are flaky and was mentally prepared to go it alone (and I thought recruiting zombies was hard!) if need be. Besides, I was already there, no sense in wasting a trip....and a metro card.

We headed up to the trains and hopped in the first Northbound train. The train was empty, so I started to think, oh, this is going to be a piece of cake! Then a young guy got in. Grreat. My friend C was laughing, but she and I pretended we didn't know each other. Then another guy got in...and another. I was starting to wonder if I would chicken out. My bravery and improv skills were going to be tested. As the train pulled away from the station I waited until the next stop before depantsing (or in this case, deskirting...I figured it would be easier to remove, what with shoes and all).

Once we reached the third station and the doors shut, I now had a car full of spectators. I stood up and took my skirt off, folded it up and put it in my bookbag. I then sat back down and continued playing with my phone. I heard one lady say "what is she doing?". My friend later told me that the lady got up and switched seats.

At the next station, more people got on. I don't really think they noticed because my undies looked like short shorts and I had a long sweater on as well (I'm brave, but not THAT brave), so I didn't get as many reactions as I could have gotten. Because I was flying solo, we had the flexibility to hop on and off the train as we saw fit. At the next stop we got off and switched to another car. Upon entering the car I got a couple of looks. It was kind of nerve wrecking, but also fun to see the expressions on people's faces.

We hopped cars a couple more times and when we reached the 8th stop or so, we deboarded so we could repeat the mission going back South. I decided to put the skirt back on and do it all over because it was mostly the taking off of the skirt that got the most looks and reactions. If they hadn't seen me take it off, people didn't seem to notice that I was in underwear, they just figured that I was wearing shorts that were WAY too short for someone of my age and thigh composition.

I posed for a couple of pictures and my friend captured a couple of funny reactions as you can see in some of the pictures. It was fun to see some double takes. I not only surprised others, but also myself; I'm clearly braver (and crazier) than I thought.

I'm trying to convince my hubby to go with me to NY next year to do it with 4,000 other people instead of being the Miami Lone Ranger again. In NY the statement is We do this for fun!...over here, the statment is, I'm the crazy-pantless-traincar-hopping lady!

If you are a non-flaky South Floridian (wait, is that an oxymoron?) and would like to participate in other fun events like this one, join the Improv Miami group on Facebook. I promise that (most) future events will involve pants, but only if you promise to show up if you say you will.