The idea was to post something today because tomorrow, my regular posting day, I'll be out in the second largest city in the whole entire country of America doing some cultural shit; the kind of shit I should be doing a lot more considering I live within very comfortable driving distance to the second largest city in the whole entire country of America. There's even a train to take me out there if I didn't feel like driving, but this is still Los Angeles we're talking about, so the train is inconveniently timed, poorly documented and doesn't really quite go anywhere I want to go. I mean, with recent service expansions, I could conceivably now get from my house in the far exurbs southeast, in the liminal space between the coastal Santa Ana range and the Mojave Desert, to Santa Monica via rail if I'm prepared for it to take 1.5 to 2 times as long as it would just to drive it, even in traffic, and for probably slightly more than it would cost in gas. Well, that last point probably isn't true anymore. Thanks President Brandon.
Train travel is a lot like rain for a Southern Californian. It's not that it never happens, it's just that growing up with such a pronounced dearth and disappointment, it never really runs out of novelty.
I think the first train I ever rode on was in London, on the Underground on the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow Airport. It might have been more time-efficient to take a cab, but see above about being from Southern California. Taxis are things you saw in movies or television to indicate it took place in New York before about 2010. If I was going to get around in some unusual way, a train is automatically more exotic than the experience of getting around in a different car than my own. The wonder of sitting in the back seat dissipates pretty quickly. It's something you spend all of your childhood yearning to grow out of. Now I'm back where I could be foiled by someone else's decision to engage the child locks, and I'm afforded the opportunity of paying for it? Nah, trains all day.
I made a point to take my kids around to see some stuff while they were growing up, and almost never rented a car if I could avoid it. So they've been on trains and trams and subways in New York, Chicago, Atlanta,* D.C., London (again for me!), Tokyo (for my oldest). They're seasoned citizens of the world now, who know exactly enough to recognize how fucked up and slow-witted the place they call home is about getting people from one part of it to another. That's the gift of perspective I've given them.
In the first two weeks of July, I'll be out and about again, for the first time since 2016 I think, in a place where I don't plan to drive. Part of that is to avoid the stress of being a Foreign Driver, part of it is to save on some of the expense of operating a motor vehicle, part of it is to indulge in the romance of it (something that can only be felt by someone who isn't reliant on what I'm sure is a somehow inefficiently designed and run system to get people to their places of work) and part of it is because you can't look around at shit when you're driving, man. Ever since my kids have been old enough to drive, I let them whenever I can if we're going somewhere together. I've lived in the same place since about 2003 and only now am I beginning to realize some of the details of what's around me since I'm not locked in on stop lights, road signs, tail lights, wildlife or whether or not it's windy enough for the palm trees to start their projectile attacks on cars.
Do you have any idea how many Wingstops there are out there? Way more than you'd think! I'm learning so much.
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*It was mostly just us on that MARTA train. Either it was off-peak or Atlantans are more hardheaded about cars than Angelenos.
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