Got my exercise first thing in the morning today…
2 minute read
August 16, 2007, 7:29 PM
This morning, I got my exercise early. I’m walking down my street, I’m getting close to the corner, and I saw a large, white vehicle ahead of me at the opposite corner. It’s my bus. Immediately, my walk turned into a sprint, as I totally started booking it to make my bus (the bus was early, as it wasn’t supposed to be there for another five minutes). I sprinted across the northbound lanes of Georgia Avenue without much difficulty, and then traffic prevented me from sprinting across the southbound lanes right away. I did, however, get the Metrobus operator’s attention while I was in the median, and considering the bus was early anyway, I’d hoped he would hold long enough for me to catch him. Instead, while I was sprinting across the southbound lanes, he shut the door and started taking off, nearly running me over in the process. Nice guy.
So I missed the bus, no thanks to the bus operator. Okay, though, we’re flexible. I ended up walking up from my street to the next stop, about a quarter mile or so up the road. I figure from there, since my regular bus (though this wasn’t the regular driver) kicked me to the curb, I can either catch the next Y bus, or catch Ride-On’s 51 (whichever comes first), which skips my regular morning stop (it turns a corner there coming from Norbeck Park and Ride), but does take the next one. So I ended up taking the 51 to Glenmont, and then from there I caught the Red Line for my normal Metro commute.
Continue reading…The “L Street Bridge”?
2 minute read
August 10, 2007, 11:54 PM
Last time I checked, there is no “L Street Bridge” that Metro runs over. In fact, a Google search of “L Street Bridge” and “DC” only comes up with a feature of the Washington Convention Center, which spans several blocks, and whose upper levels bridge over two streets, one of which is L Street NW. Metro goes near that location, but it’s underground.
What happened, and the reason I bring this up, is because while I was on the Yellow Line after work today to visit a friend in Alexandria, the operator reminded everyone that Yellow Line service would cease at 10 PM and remain suspended until Monday morning, due to the closure of the “L Street Bridge” for maintenance. I was thinking, eh? about that for a moment, and then realized what he meant. He meant the Charles R. Fenwick Bridge, which is part of the 14th Street Bridge complex in southwest Washington. The route between L’Enfant Plaza and Pentagon stations, which includes the Fenwick Bridge, is known internally as the “L” route. Most people, though, don’t know that (but then again, I’m not most people). Likewise, most people would look at me strangely if I told them that my work commute took me from B11 to A03 and back. In layman’s terms, that’s Glenmont to Dupont Circle and back.
Categories: WMATA
When in Washington, this does happen from time to time…
2 minute read
August 8, 2007, 7:50 PM
Towards the end of the day at work today, my cell phone went off for a text message. Dupont Circle, Woodley Park-Zoo, and Cleveland Park stations closed for a while due to a suspicious package. As it turns out, the package was harmless, containing cardboard and paper.
Still, it caused a major delay in Metro service. And all the more amazing was that Metro was actually calling it a “major” delay. Realize that this is a transit operator that considers single-tracking on significant amounts of several lines with 20-minute waits for trains during the day to be a “minor” delay. But this time, Metro even went so far as to say to avoid the Red Line altogether. The suspicious package was on a train at Dupont Circle. Woodley Park-Zoo and Cleveland Park were closed to allow trains to turn back towards Shady Grove using the interlocking at Van Ness-UDC. Then on the other side, trains turned back towards Glenmont using the pocket track at Farragut North. Then Metro ran a “bustitution” (where buses are used to fill in for the lack of rail service) between Van Ness and Farragut North.
“May I send them through the bulkhead door?”
3 minute read
July 25, 2007, 6:53 PM
Today on my way home from work, I got Rohr 1064, the second car in an eight-car train. The car had relatively new carpeting (it was the newer CAF-style striped carpet vs. the solid orange carpet), but mechanically, unless it’s going to see a second rehab, its best days are behind it, I’m afraid.
Here’s what happened. I’m talking on the phone to Mom. The train pulled into Rhode Island Avenue station. *ding ding* Doors opening! Step back to allow customers to exit. When boarding, please move to the center of the car. Doors remained firmly closed. *ding dong ding dong* Step back, doors closing! *ding ding* Doors opening! Step back to allow customers to exit. When boarding, please move to the center of the car. *ding dong ding dong* Step back, doors closing! *ding ding* Doors opening! Step back to allow customers to exit. When boarding, please move to the center of the car. Doors were still firmly closed. I tried to signal to the customers at the door to use the bulkhead door. They didn’t understand my signal. So I said, “Mom? I’ll call you back.” So now I got up, and headed over to the end of the car, and hit the intercom button. The train operator answered, and I told him, “The doors aren’t opening on 1064. May I send them through the bulkhead door?” The operator answered, “That is correct.” So I grabbed the handle and pulled open the bulkhead door on the “blind” end of 1064. Then I reached through and opened the bulkhead door of 1065, and pushed that door open. Then I addressed the car, saying, “Anyone who’s getting off here needs to go through this door to the next car.” About six or so people went through. “Anyone else?” Getting no further response from my fellow passengers, I gave the train operator, who was standing at the cab door of 1065 observing the operation, a thumbs-up sign to indicate that we were done, and closed the bulkhead doors. The operator closed the doors, and we were off.
Now this ought to be fun…
2 minute read
July 15, 2007, 12:22 AM
Let’s add one more event to an already fun-filled weekend where I’m starting to have concerns about getting my housework done. Wikipedia’s having a DC meetup on Saturday, July 21 – the day before Mom and Sis arrive on their respective journeys. It’s going to be at Union Station at 5:00 PM at Uno Chicago Grill. I’d say this ought to be fun.
If nothing else, this will be a fun opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of the people that I work with regularly in building and tweaking an encyclopedia. I’ve met a few Wikipedians in person already, just going about life. As with this Web site, I have my photo on my Wikipedia user page, so I’m fairly recognizable.
So we’ll just add a sixth Metro day to the schedule for next week, going from Glenmont or Wheaton (I try to mix it up on the weekend) to Union Station. The general rule of thumb, however, is that I want to avoid riding Glenmont to Dupont Circle on an off-day – reminds me too much of going to work.
Speaking of Metro, one of my sister’s friends from Virginia Tech, whom I’ve also met before, recently told her that she saw me on the Metro on my way to work. As a general rule, folks: If you see me on Metro, say hello to me. I may look completely absorbed in my copy of the Express, but I’ll put it down in a second to have a good conversation.
And where they found me is no surprise – I do the same thing every day in my morning commute. I sit in the fifth car (sixth if it’s an eight-car train) of a Red Line train to Shady Grove, in the second row of seats behind the center door, on the left side of the train, with my copy of the Express. About the only difference day to day is the car number.
It’s like tempting fate…
2 minute read
July 13, 2007, 6:52 PM
It’s like tempting fate when you get Breda 4018 as your lead car. You may recall that number. It was the car that got hit in the Woodley Park-Zoo accident in 2004. But now it looks like a regular 4000-series again, with CAF carpet replacing the original orange carpet. Only thing different is it’s missing its exterior Breda horse.
Otherwise, Sunday the 22nd is going to be fun, as two members of the Schumin family travel and meet in the middle. Sis is going to Minnesota to visit Chris at his summer job, flying out of Dulles. Mom is going to be returning to Stuarts Draft from Philadelphia, after a weekend out with her old college roommates. And where is everyone meeting? Silver Spring, Maryland, putting me into play. Dad’s not going to be able to join us, as he’s going to be elsewhere racing the Mini with his autocross group.
So the question becomes what to do… the encounter will be brief, since Mom’s going to be roughly in the middle of her travel day. I’ve suggested having either lunch or dinner somewhere in Wheaton. That ought to be fun. I must say, it’s nice being along the I-95 corridor, since Richmond is to the south, and Baltimore and Philadelphia are to the north. In fact, both Baltimore and Philly are on my eventual to-do list, as Baltimore’s really close, and Philly’s about the same distance from me as DC is from Stuarts Draft. So who knows, maybe you’ll get to see some Philly photo sets eventually.
July 4 photos…
4 minute read
July 9, 2007, 9:22 PM
Greetings, all! Finally I get an opportunity to share the photos from my Fourth of July. As I mentioned, my protest buddies and I all got together to counter-protest a group that ended up being a no-show, but we still had fun with it.
Maddy by far had the most interesting shirt, working the peace sign and the anarchy sign in there with her “Who you callin a terrorist?” shirt.
The people we were counter-protesting didn’t even show up…
3 minute read
July 4, 2007, 10:14 PM
Today, this Fourth of July, I went down to the National Mall and once again stood up for a cause with my regular protest buddies. This time, we were staging a counter-protest, rather than being the main demonstration. The event we would be counter-protesting was a Nazi rally planned for the Washington Monument. We would be counter-protesting them from the area around the World War II Memorial. The idea was to tell those people that racism is not welcome in DC. Our counter-rally was advertised on DC Indymedia here and here.
We showed up, and what do you know – they didn’t. And just as well. I think a friend of mine and I weren’t the only ones with visions of The Blues Brothers dancing in our heads, where Jake and Elwood ran the Illinois Nazis off a bridge and into a river.
Also, here’s something you don’t see every day – DC’s anarchist crowd showing up to a protest and doing it “straight”, as I call it – no masks, no black bloc.
A couple of pictures I found amusing…
3 minute read
June 27, 2007, 10:08 PM
Did I mention how much I love living in the DC area? I really enjoy life in and around Washington. You see so many interesting things and so many interesting things happen. And I have a couple of amusing photos that I captured with my cell phone…
Categories: Amusing, Friends, Washington DC, WMATA
Seems I’m popular at Georgetown…
< 1 minute read
June 21, 2007, 7:58 PM
Seems so, according to one of our interns at work. This particular intern was at the Georgetown University library and was searching for me, and the browser just popped my site right in. Looks like they weren’t the only person with me on their mind that day. I thought it was kind of interesting. I would imagine that they were really surprised.
Meanwhile, today on the Metro on the way back from work, we had an operator who acted like he was our mother or something. “Step into the car. Do not push or shove.” Yes, mother. At Union Station, he said, “Do not run over the people in front of you so you can catch your next train.” I wouldn’t have been surprised if, when we got to Glenmont, he had said, “Remember to eat your vegetables and wash behind your ears.” You get some interesting folks in the cab, I’d say.
Categories: Schumin Web meta, WMATA, Work
“If there’s a person by the name of Aaron on this train…”
2 minute read
June 20, 2007, 6:35 PM
Yeah, that’s what I heard today on my morning commute. The operator gets on the PA at Metro Center and announces, “If there’s a person by the name of Aaron on this train, your mother is meeting you at Metro Center. Aaron, get off the train here. Aaron get off the train here!” And the way the operator was pronouncing it, it sounded more like “Arrn”. All of us on the train got a chuckle out of that. As off-the-wall announcements go, I think this beats the “Sir, don’t stand in my doorway like that!” announcement at Braddock Road back in 2003 by at least a leap, and maybe also a bound.
It could always be worse, though. What happened on the Green Line yesterday was comedic from where I was on the Red Line, but not so funny for the riders of four separate Green Line trains that got offloaded. A track problem caused a train to lose power just outside of Fort Totten. So one train is dead on the tracks. A train behind it is offloaded in order to use it to push the other train to the next station, West Hyattsville. There, first train is offloaded. Then while pushing the dead train back to Greenbelt Yard, the second train loses power. So now, assuming six-car trains, we have twelve rail cars dead on the tracks. A third train is offloaded to push what is now two dead trains to Greenbelt. And what do you know? It dies, too. They offload a fourth train to push the other three, and it also fails. That’s 24 cars coupled together, assuming that each train was six cars long. If there were any eight-car trains in the bunch, it could have been even longer. They finally had to use a locomotive, which doesn’t rely on the third rail for power, to take the whole lot of them to Greenbelt. Needless to say, some people were really PO’d after that.
Yeah, life on the Metro can be downright amusing sometimes.
Categories: WMATA
A whole bunch of miscellaneous stuff I’ve been meaning to show you…
3 minute read
June 17, 2007, 10:07 AM
I realized recently that I’ve gotten a little bit of a backlog of stuff I’ve been meaning to show you that I’ve captured with my cell phone over the last week or so. So here we go.
So there you go – photographic proof that deer do wander through the vacant lot next door. Apologies for the blurry picture, but this is the cell phone, and not Big Mavica.
Categories: Fire alarms, Photography, Shoes, Silver Spring, Washington DC, WMATA
What a lovely day with Mom today…
4 minute read
June 16, 2007, 11:58 PM
Mom came to visit this weekend, and we had a wonderful time. She came up on Friday, and took the Metro down to Dupont Circle to meet me right after work. We rode back to Wheaton station, where Mom parked, and then went back to my place, where we brought some stuff in. She brought me my computer chair (yay!) and also a coffee table. Mom replaced the coffee table in the family room last year, and so now I have the old coffee table. I love it. It looks so good in my living room, and it will certainly enhance the way things look.
Once we brought everything in, we ordered pizza from Papa John’s. There’s a Papa John’s not far from here – in the same shopping center as H-Mart. We got a pizza that could best be described as unconventional – their spinach alfredo pizza, which has an alfredo base rather than a tomato base. We also got mushrooms on it. I don’t even want to think about how many calories that thing had, but it was good. After dinner, we watched TV, and then went to bed. Mom became the first to sleep in my bedroom on a cot that she brought, and then I slept in the living room on the futon (as always).
Then on Saturday, we went to Ikea in College Park, where I finally got that new bed. I got their Hemnes brown-black bed with a nice, comfortable mattress. Queen-size, and all for me. We’re getting that delivered. Mom got some furniture as well, and we also got a chance to look all over their showroom. The place was not nearly as busy as it was on Memorial Day, and so we got a chance to stroll around a bit. Plus, considering that this was my second trip to Ikea, I was not nearly so overwhelmed.
Categories: Car, College Park, Family, Food and drink, IKEA, Wheaton, WMATA
Who skinned the pylon?
2 minute read
June 8, 2007, 9:53 PM
I was sitting on a retaining wall near Dupont Circle after work today and was talking to Mom on the phone, and noticed this:
Categories: WMATA
The final DC trip…
5 minute read
May 31, 2007, 9:08 PM
The final DC trip in my every-two-weeks DC trip routine that I had maintained for almost three and a half years happened on May 8. On that final trip, it was highly appropriate that I tied up the final loose end in my DC trips. That was that I finally took my friend Katie Shapiro to Washington with me. You may recall that we were originally going to go on February 2, 2005, but I had an unexpected issue and had to cancel at literally the last minute. Now, we finally pulled it off.
You may be wondering why it took me this long to do this little exposé about this trip. After all, it’s May 31 now, and this trip occurred on the 8th. The reason is because two days later, I signed the lease to my Silver Spring apartment, and finally moved out of my parents’ house. So there was a bit of a disruption in my Internet service and my whole media collection, since all my stuff lives on my real computer rather than on the Lappy.
So let me take you back a little bit. I was in the last week of my “extended vacation”, and Katie and I planned to go to Washington right before I moved.
It was a fun trip, too. Since I’d gotten fired from Wal-Mart, every DC trip was related to either getting a job or getting an apartment. This trip would be different. This was a classic DC trip.