I need a ride!!!!

When I first started this blog, I promised that I would bring you the "scoop" on the coolest, the strangest, the weirdest, the most amazing New York has to offer.

Today I am bringing you the most frustrating of the Big Apple. I though that the insane lines to catch a cab on a Friday evening when it's pouring outside is the worst that it can get. That was until yesterday morning when a big CLOSED sign was posted at the entrance of my subways station when the outside temperature stood still at 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

I find it amazing that 33,700 workers put a halt to the largest mass transit system in the U.S - more than 7 million daily riders normally rely on the city's buses and subways. On a daily base, some 6,200 subways cars run across 700 miles of track, and 4,483 buses run over 2,017 city miles. That was until yesterday, when all that came to a stop.

True to its second nature of adapting to disasters and hard times, the city did not seem to cripple under the effects of the strike.

"We cannot give them the satisfaction," said mayor Michael Bloomberg, calling on New Yorkers to walk, bicycle and find other ways to get around to avoid shutting down businesses and schools and the "havoc" he says the union is intent on creating. The mayor - wearing a "I love New York" sweatshirt to underscore his message - went on to say that New Yorkers have a habit of getting through tough times and will once again prove that this is a city that works - "even when our buses and subways don't."

News of the strike sent many New Yorkers scrambling for their car keys, trying to get into town before 5 a.m., when most of Manhattan will be off-limits to vehicles trying to enter with fewer than four people. That rule will be in effect from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. until the strike ends. Numerous car pool locations have also been set up.

New York's subway has about 1.4 billion riders a year and is the fifth-busiest system in the world, behind Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City. Counting buses and commuter railroads, the MTA estimates that it moves 2.4 billion people a year.

Considering that the last citywide bus and subway strike in New York from 1980 lasted 11 days, I offer the number one position in my top of most frustrating moments in the Big Apple to the New York Transport Workers Union of 2006.

I need a ride!