On my way into New York on Thursday, my train stopped. The conductor got on the horn and explained that there was track work being done and we had to wait for another train to pass before we could proceed. It would just be a minute he said.

A few rows behind me, a very loud-talking fellow passenger apparently couldn’t hear the message over his own voice.

“I’m on the train. It’s stopped. I have no idea why. Yeah, it’s not even moving. I don’t know what’s up.”

Maybe he should have listened instead of subjecting the rest of us to his loud one-sided conversation. But then again, I did learn about his medical problems 12 seconds later.

“Yeah they said it’s an outpatient thing. No it’s not a stone, it’s a tear in my intestine.”

And with that my day was complete. Or so I thought.

Waiting in my future was the greatest dining experience of my life, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to eat on the planet Mars.

That’s right, Mars. Or more specifically, Mars in the year 2112. My cousin and I were deciding on where to eat, and she mentioned that such a place existed, and without question that is where we were heading.

A man in an aluminum-looking suit with crazy hair greets you and asks if you want to walk to Mars or take the spaceship. We took the spaceship, a 22-seat craft that got us to the planet in a mere matter of minutes.

The red planet is, well, very red. It’s rocky, has a penchant for techno music and some apparently friendly aliens who entertain children and adults alike. And the don’t have just chicken parmesan, they have cosmic chicken parmesan. It was very cosmic.

As their website says, “Why spend another ho-hum evening planet side, eating and seeing the same old stuff you have been eating and seeing for years?”

And now I can cross “Eat on Mars” off my life to-do list.

And just for the heck of it, 1968pennies.com, where they’ll put your name on the donors list if you send them a penny from 1968. They say tons of pennies were made that year, many to be lost or forgotten. That’s why they want to collect them, to save them for future generations to enjoy.