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This Hero Commuter Paddleboarded Across the Hudson to Make a Meeting

Ferry riders spotted the guy paddling across the river wearing his business suit.

New York's public transportation can be a complete and utter shitshow, with subway straphangers having to brave fitness-crazed rats, Biblical flooding, and honest-to-god ceiling collapses. But one Jersey City resident realized that there was a way he could both make it to work on time and avoid the unique hell of the usual commute: by hopping on a paddleboard and floating his way across the Hudson River in his business suit, NBC 4 reports.

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Scott Holt told NBC 4 that he was desperate to make it into the city for a meeting with a potential manager last Thursday, so hopping on his paddleboard apparently seemed like the quickest—and cheapest—solution.

"I didn’t wanna pay for the toll," the 32-year-old comedian explained to the New York Post. "I’m a starving artist, so I had the board and just kind of popped on and went."

Unfortunately, once Holt was out in the water, it wasn't exactly smooth sailing. "Boats' wakes were coming at me from different angles and the current was quick closer to Manhattan," he said, telling NBC 4 that the chop almost sent him tumbling into the Hudson a couple of times during his voyage, but he somehow stayed upright the whole way.

Passengers on a passing ferry spotted Holt out in the water and one woman, Eunice Rivers, managed to catch a video of him mid-trip, paddling valiantly against the current as water splashed up on his dress shoes. "People just couldn't believe it," Rivers told NBC 4.

Not everybody was so stoked on the commuter's ingenuity, though. Holt said a water taxi captain thoroughly chewed him out once he landed ashore in Manhattan, yelling about how stupid and dangerous it is to dick around on a paddleboard on such a busy waterway, but he eventually let him go.

It reportedly took Holt a half hour to Oregon Trail his way across the river, which doesn't exactly seem faster than the train, but at least he saved a little cash. He somehow made it to his meeting on time, too. "I was trying to meet a manager to represent me to be a comedian, but that meeting didn’t go as well as the commute," Holt told the Post. "So I’m still on the market for a manager."

Still, he successfully floated his way to Manhattan without hopping on public transit, or, you know, drowning, so that's something. Maybe some Brooklyn residents should start investing in paddleboard lessons now before the L train shuts down next year.

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