Our first thought this morning when we heard about the transit strike was "Oh no! What will the Observer do?" Because, you see, it's Tuesday, which means that the little gang over at 21st & Broadway has a big day ahead of them before putting out the paper formerly known as "more salmon-colored than it is now."

We were worried - Sheelah Kolhatkar and Gabe Sherman live in Brooklyn, Tom Scocca in Queens, and who only knew how George Gurley and Hilly would get to work? He can be a mite unpredictable.

Relief, joy, exultation - after trudging over bridges, dodging traffic on the BQE and braving bitter, bitter cold the troops made it in to put out tomorrow's selection of really long articles, some of which we bet will have the words "Keller" "Sulzberger" and "plummeting stock price" in them.

Here are the harrowing accounts of their desperate, valiant journeys in to the office:

Sheelah Kolhatkar: I rode with Ben Smith, Matthew Schuerman and Jason Horowitz. It was very pleasant. It was actually the smoothest ride to work I've ever had... I think it took twenty minutes.

Tom Scocca: "Caught my usual 9:43 LIRR out of Flushing without incident. Walked down Broadway like I sometimes do if the weather's nice."

Anna Schneider-Mayerson: "I live in the east village. I walked to work."

Gabe Sherman: "I ran into work from my house in Cobble Hill. I've completed several marathons (most recently New York in 2003), but the transit strike was something else. It was a bit dicey dodging bikers and walkers across the Brooklyn bridge. Things got easier once I hit lower Manhattan. It was smooth sailing up Lafayette Street, through Union Square and up to Observer central on Broadway."

We know that sounds like he went straight to work without showering, but we asked, and he did (at the gym). Yay Gabe - fit and clean!