A brief lull for Orange Line riders in Metro’s Safe Track program (I can’t believe we’re all calling it that! what a triumph of marketing?) allows me to come and go through Vienna. I was almost going to say “my beloved Vienna.”

Maybe that’s a bit too strong, but such is the lure of the familiar and comfortable that I almost thought of it that way this morning. There is the familiar parking garage, open and above-ground unlike the one at Wiehle-Reston. There is the bridge over 66, the newspaper hawkers, the buses roaring to their bays.

I got to take the morning drive along Vale and Hunter Mill Roads, the road muggy and shaggy with summer, the turns a delight.

It was only a commute, but it felt like a homecoming.