A Walker in the Suburbs

Vienna Metro, 7 a.m.

A train lumbers into the station and a swarm of thickly clad Northern Virginians scampers to board it. It’s 25 degrees outside; our breath makes clouds in the morning air.

I take a seat on the right hand side just in time for the big show — the winter sunrise. Clouds pile up and fan out, a medley of pinks and blues. On the horizon, a gash of gold.

The photo I take is grainy, a blurry likeness through smeared glass, with train lights reflected back at me. An imperfect replica, captured with a click (since I forgot to switch my phone to silent).

Two minutes later, the man in front of me takes out his smartphone, snaps his own sunrise shot.

If I do nothing else today I will take comfort in this — that someone else noticed the day unfolding and took the time to make it his own.

Here are phrases that chill the hearts of Metro commuters — “car offloading,” “single tracking,” “track maintenance.” The one I heard yesterday — “schedule adjustment” — elicited no ire, only a wry grin.

Come on! Is Metro running so smartly and speedily and easily that it needs to pause to avoid arriving early? Couldn’t it just be ahead of time for once and put that anomaly in its karmic bank account against future late arrivals?

But no, we sat several minutes or more at some insanely early hour — doors wide open to the wind and to customers who dash into the car breathlessly thinking they’d just made it only to realize that they could have taken their time and sauntered in. It doesn’t take long before they realize that this train isn’t going anywhere for a few minutes — and that now they are part of a schedule adjustment, too.

Ever since the new Silver Line went in I’ve been zooming through Tysons on rails above the ground. Sometimes I look down at the traffic, strings of light in the looming darkness, and feel good I’m up above it all.

But yesterday and today I drove to Tysons, saw Metro from below, was bewildered at the new traffic patterns. I was flexible, I was free — until I was sitting at lights and in lines.

Sitting and sitting and sitting …

I’m learning a little more about Metro’s new Silver Line every day: where to stand on the platform so  I can transfer easily downtown; how to negotiate the confusing, multi-level garage; and, this morning, how to avoid the garage entirely.

There’s a free parking lot near the Reston Wiehle station, actually a series of parking lots. I’ve known about them for years — they were originally intended as park-and-ride lots for bus riders — but it suddenly dawned on me that they’re just a couple blocks from the new Metro station. Maybe they’re not open anymore, maybe they’re reserved — or maybe they’re a way to save $4.85! 

Today was the day to find out, so I left the house a little after 6, pulled up to the lots about 6:20 and found … pandemonium. Cars pulling in, cars circling, cars like vultures searching for carrion. I tried one section of the lot and found it completely full, then headed back the way I had come in to explore the other side. It looked tight. Most spots were taken but there, off to my left, wasn’t that an opening? Yes! It was! I pulled in quickly before someone beat me to it.

As I was walking to the station I fell in step with a fellow commuter who told me that this lot “always fills up by 6:28. Those cars there are the last ones that will find spots.”

Why 6:28 and not 6:29 or 6:31 I never learned, but the man seemed quite sure of himself. A full lot by 6:28 a.m.? Why not?

All this walking in the suburbs is fine — until the suburbanite can’t find her car. Yesterday I parked in  the new Reston-Wiehle Silver Line garage. I had errands to run after work and with easy access to the highway (which the station straddles) I was looking forward to an easy afternoon.

That was before I stepped out of the elevator on level A3 and realized I had no idea where I parked. The three-lane exit I spotted was nothing like the one-lane entrance I’d used at 6:12 a.m. But before I could panic, I spotted two yellow-vested Metro employees on golf carts.

“Can’t find your car?” the older one asked, in what sounded like a Greek accent.

“No,” I said.

“No one can,” he said. “Jump in. I’ll help you find it.”

 For the next ten minutes we trundled around the garage, and he regaled me with stories of car misplacements. “Many people think they parked here but actually parked in the other garage,” he said, shaking his head. Maybe he was making this up, but it made me feel better. At least I was in the right garage.

Aren’t these spots for hybrid cars?” I asked when we were on the highest level, A1. “No rules now,” he said. “This like Wild West.”

A few more loops of the garage and there was the car, right where I left it — on Level A3 of the Wild West. It was a wild ride.

(W.H.D. Koerner, Cattle Stampede)