Close call

The other day I witnessed perhaps the most fantastic balance recovery ever. This disaster could have been epic. I'll set the scene.

I boarded the train at Metro Center, after letting two blind passengers on first. The passengers took the two handicap seats next to the middle entrance of the car. Normally I don't take note of handicapped passengers, but two blind passengers were something to note because it was such a rare occurrence. We were riding jauntily along to National Airport. A guy boarded the train along with three extremely packed pieces of luggage, plus a large laptop bag. He made camp by the entrance way, easily within falling distance of the blind couple, and proceeded to try to balance himself as the train continued.

The rule of thumb is, one hand for you and one hand for the boat, er train. Clearly, this had the potential to be a recipe for catastrophe if the train had had to make a sudden stop or rocked from side to side. Sure enough, the train stopped suddenly. The passenger with the bags adopted the position of having the laptop bag resting on his luggage while reading his email on his Blackberry. He didn't have a hand to support himself, violating the common sense rule. He began to fall over his suitcases and laptop bag, in the direction of the blind couple. In the course of his fall, his extremely top heavy bags started to fall towards the couple as well. Fortunately, this guy was blessed with the balance of a gazelle or something because not only did he save his baggage from falling into the blind couple, but he managed to recover himself as well. Truly a remarkable athletic feat. My hat is off to you sir, whoever you are. Job well done.

I need a transportation engineer

Can someone explain how this makes sense? Delays occur on metro, this is just a fact of life. It's a mechanical device and things are going to break down. The frustrating thing with delays is when they occur and how they are dealt with. Nothing is more infuriating than to be sitting on a track going one direction with the announcement that you are stopped because of delays in the opposite direction. This never ceases to confuse me.

I actually did ask a civil engineer, since transportation engineer wasn't within inquiry distance, and she explained to me that it is because the trains are a closed system. If the train line continues to operate as normal, with a stoppage somewhere along the line, it will cause further delays throughout that line. Fine. I don't like the explanation, but it makes sense a little.

But the delay that happens with me frequently is this. My stop is at the end of the line. There are two tracks at the station, each track operates the length of the line, but there is also a switch in between the two of them. At least twice a week we stop before the switch for a couple of minutes while the train at the station leaves. This I don't understand. Each track has a dedicated line and the ability to change tracks. Why stop? Further more, why stop before the switch when a delay is encountered further up the line, as happened the other day? We waited 10 minutes for the problem to resolve itself, and WE WERE WITHIN VIEW OF THE STATION!!!! Wouldn't it make sense to just pull the train into the station and wait for the delay to end? It's the end of the line, your riders want off. Come on metro, think this through!!

Why Pay For A Gym Membership?

In addition to providing, eh hem, a dependable environment for its riders, Metro also allows its riders to work out while commuting through creative usage of materials in the car. Riders may participate in the following activities:

• Pole spinning. Spinning around the standing poles until dizziness leads to loss of balance. Riders should chart spinning time to loss of balance and gradually increase the length of time before ending on the floor.
• Calf stretches. After spinning ad nauseum, the rider may find that their calves require stretching. The rider is encouraged to use the walls and barriers of metro to stretch their legs (see diagram for proper form).

• Pull ups. Utilizing the hand bars running across the ceiling, the rider may attempt as many pull ups until failure. The rider is encouraged to increase stamina and endurance so that the number of pullups increases over time.
  
• Bar flips. An advanced move where the rider hangs from the ceiling bar. The rider then swings their legs up and through the gap between their arms and the bar, landing facing the starting direction. The rider is encouraged to avoid landing in the lap of the nearest passenger.

And yes, all four of these activities were witnessed over the summer. Metro riders are nothing if not fit.

Back to School

Ah, my favorite time of year. The weather starts to change, the leaves start to turn, the smell of the grill fills the air, and conversation turns to the grid iron. Also, this marks the end of tourist season in the DC area and a return to normalcy on metro.

I find it ironic that when the weather is most frustrating on metro during the summer (hot and humid), that it is also packed with people who are totally unfamiliar with the guidelines for riding on metro. Things like if you're not walking up the escalator, you stand on the right. If you don't, you get that large angry lady shouting at you "Excuse me!!! Stand on the right, walk on the left!!!"

Also, metro's designers would have you believe it's a commuting system, as most of the ridership works downtown. When you get on the train, you'll notice that no one talks to any one else, even if they're next door neighbors. And if people do talk, they get shot dirty looks and people turn up their iPods. On the metro, the riders want to be in their own world, listen to their iPods, and read their newpapers or books. Tourists don't understand this immediately, which makes them easy to identify because they're all chatty about whatever activity they just came from. The more outgoing tourist will engage YOU in conversation, usually about what the train conductor just said. Deciphering a conductor's announcements tends to be like understanding someone after they have just been punched in the mouth. Clearly, annunciation isn't on the checklist of things to look for in a train conductor.

Talking on cell phones also has it's own separate expectation. You have two categories of people who use their phone on the metro. You either have the hushed talker or the loud talker. Metro would prefer that all conversations be conducted in muted tones. Again, easy to identify the tourists because they're shouting into their cells. You also get the random passenger who feels that the rest of the car should know about their conversation. This happens primarily in the tunnels where people have a hard time hearing and shout because they think the people on the other end of the conversation are experiencing the same thing.

Moving to the center of the car when boarding is an advanced concept few seem to grasp, unless the car is extremely full. First time riders will tend to stand closest to the door where they can get in everyone's way and also look at the system map after every stop to make sure they know where they are. This isn't restricted to rookies though. Daily commuters will stand next to the door if they are riding a few stops, but at least anticipate which side of the car the doors will open and move to the opposite side.

The tourists do have one up on the normal riders, they clean up after themselves. The Washinton Post and Washington Times both publish free newspapers, which are distributed at all of the metro stations. While this service is appreciated, it means that you can sit in just about every seat on the train and find a paper to read because the regular commuters read theirs and simply leave them on the train. Tourists tend to take their trash with them when they leave the train.

The most enjoyable part of the end of tourist season is that the prized find, an empty seat, happens more frequently from now until the start of tourist season in the spring. That is unless a charter bus pulls in somewhere and fills a couple of cars.

Everybody's a comedian

I flew to Houston to visit family over the long weekend. Our flight was Monday morning, missing the over hyped hurricane Gustav. On the return flight, I noticed that one of the flight attendants (a dude) was being overly chatty and yucking it up with the passengers in front of me. But that's his job to be jovial right? No big deal. As chuckles was making his way up the aisle my direction, the lady next to me went to the bathroom.

I was thoroughly engaged in the latest Scientific American and didn't notice the flight attendant standing next to me. He asked "Sir, do you have any trash?" I had a napkin from the HA-YUGE sandwich they provided on the flight, so I threw it in the bag he was holding. He asked "Do you have anything else?" Still oblivious, I said "No." "What's that then?" he asked pointing to the seat next to me. Looking back at me was a big pile of poo!! My eyes probably looked like this.




The flight attendant found this quite hilarious, and with good reason. I love a good poo practical joke! Made me laugh the rest of the flight. Excellent work Mr. Flight Attendant, excellent work.

Small World

I was riding home on a, brace yourself, packed train! No seats to be had anywhere. Kids were even sitting on their parents laps. But the A/C was working well, so I wasn't that cranky. I was in the middle of a good read (this was before I started using Audible to get books on my iPod), and was looking forward to the 45 minute train ride to make some decent headway on the wonderful world of Greenspan. The book was a pretty heavy hardback though (if you've read Age of Turbulence you know what I'm talking about), so I couldn't stand in the middle of the car and read like I normally do. I needed to lean against something and use two hands. You know, for safety. Since I didn't want to be that guy leaning against the glass at the door entrance, I went to the back of the car and stood in the aisle, against the door. I've found that this space is quality for reading on the metro. You're standing in a spot where you don't get bumped when people exit and because it's in the back of the car it's not that crowded. As I was reading, I hadn't noticed that the car was getting increasingly filled to capacity and that the book was slowly lowering. Both relatively insignificant items of note, or so I thought. As I read, I would raise the book higher to read easier, and it would lower because holding a weight at a fixed point is butt hard. At one point the book hit some resistance, ending the up and down cycle. Now this didn't add up. I was standing up and there wasn't any obstruction (like a backpack from someone standing in front of me) that I could see. So I lifted up the book to see what I had hit. Surprise, surprise, there was a midget standing underneath my book! My book had been resting on top of a midget's head!!! Apparently the little person had been pushed further back as the car filled up, and stood underneath my book. I uttered a hasty apology, and got some sort of midget speak back that I can only interpret as "S'all right." Woops!

If you can't take the heat...

Thankfully, summer is coming to an end. I say this not because I'm glad the seasons are changing. No, I say this because metro cannot figure out how get a decent A/C system running on their cars. Oh, and the underground stations. Ever wanted to lose 20 pounds in hurry? Pick an underground station, any one will do, and stand there for say 30 minutes. If you're not a sweaty, stinking mess, consider yourself lucky because you clearly don't have active merocrine glands. Now the rest of us, we suffer.

Now it's bad enough the trains are stifling on a good day, but factor in a significant delay, like the 45 minute one the other day, plenty of tourists, and you have a recipe for disaster. Or as I like to call it, Tuesday. On this particular ride home, my car was PACKED and HOT. In fact, hot doesn't describe it. Boiling, and that's being generous. This woman had been standing before I got on the train, and stood (or tired too as I'll get to) all the way to the end with me, typically a 45 minute trip. However, on this day, delays happened all over the line because, it was boiling. Everyone knows that on boiling days, metro can't seem to get a train running on time if the apocalypse depended on it. Now these weren't the normal 5-10 minute delays. No, these were single track delays causing havoc all over the place. So we sat. And sat. And sat some more. In a tunnel. With no A/C and a faulty fan system. As I glanced around, I noticed the lady was starting to sway back and forth. Bad sign. Shortly after, she passed out and fell forward, hitting her head on the hand rail. Nothing starts a little panic like someone passing out. Someone gave up their seat so the lady could have it. She was sitting down for about five minutes and then puked all over the place. What is it with me and riders throwing up? Come on people, get an iron stomach. Someone gave her a plastic bag to empty the rest of her stomach into, but the damage was done. Boiling car, little air flow, and an excruciating ride to the next stop where I hopped into the next car down, which had working A/C. Go figure.