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Feels Like the Future

Feels Like the Future

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My first day on the Silver Line, camera in hand, I soak in the experience as if I was a tourist. Which in a way I am. This is a new place, this strange new commute.

My first thought: It’s a long time to spend on the train. My second thought: I wish we could barrel straight down the center of the Dulles Toll Road without that long detour through Tyson’s Corner. Four stations is a lot of stopping and starting.

My third thought and most overwhelming impression: this feels like the future. It’s not the future yet. Some of the stops lead to sad strip malls and car dealerships. But that will change. In 25 years, maybe even in 10, Tysons will be another Ballston or Clarendon, the Orange Line’s great urban density success stories. We have a way to go in this part of Fairfax County, but the Silver Line is a start.

Welcome to the future. Almost.

Taking the Long Way Home

Taking the Long Way Home

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If the car is in the shop, then the driver rides the bus and walks home from the corner … which is two miles away. This is fine, this is good, this is necessary, even. One should always walk the routes (or part of the routes) one drives. It’s a good way to stay humble behind the wheel.

But yesterday’s stroll wasn’t humility-provoking. It was liberating. It was divine. Late afternoon, perfect summer weather (hot but not unbearable), sweater over my shoulders, music in my ears. I crossed the busy road early in the stroll (whew! worst part behind me) and hit a good stride as I ambled beneath the hedges that lead to Fox Mill.

Here’s what I never would have seen from the car: A shy pudgy girl with some sort of instrument in a padded case on her back; we traded smiles. Was it a cello? I think so.

Two workmen mixing cement for the fence posts they were installing. Beside them, almost hidden in the grass, was a microwave plugged into a long extension cord and a couple of empty Tupperware containers. Lunch!

The last leg of my walk was along a little dirt path that I don’t usually walk in work clothes. There was a bracing incongruity to it all, and most of all to sauntering up to the house — arriving home on my own steam — that made the rest of the day a breeze.

There’s a lot to be said for taking the long way home.

All Aboard

All Aboard

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It doesn’t always happen this way — in fact, it usually does not — but today I didn’t so much ride the train to work as float here. I opened the novel at West Falls Church, left it out of the bag to read while waiting for the Red Line at Metro Center, and only reluctantly tucked it away when I exited at Judiciary Square.

It’s not the book itself I want to write about here, but the act of reading.

Sometimes I’m the person staring into the tiny screen of a smartphone or tapping on its keyboard. And the newspaper also has its allure. But books are the best commuting companions. They are the ones that blur the miles, that stitch home to office most deftly.

But just as books are good for commuting, commuting is good for books —100 minutes of almost uninterrupted mind space (round trip) — time to lose myself in even a boring tome, to say nothing of a moderately engrossing novel.

The Top Button

The Top Button

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Slogging through snow on my way to work this morning, burrowing my chin deeper into my soft, warm and utterly indispensable purple-and-blue patterned wool scarf, I paused for a moment to appreciate an essential item — the top button of my winter coat.

It’s a wool coat, aubergine, medium-lined, not the uber-heavy long black number I wore in New York. This is the coat of a suburban commuter, exposed to the elements in moderate doses. It’s a coat that’s been pushed to its outer limits this year.

And nowhere has it been pushed more than its big, top, purple button. This is the lynchpin, what keeps me going, what ensures that the scarf is up tight around the neck, what anchors the ample  collar that can be turned up to keep the cold breezes at bay.

Since I like a lot of scarf between my neck and the elements, the button is pushed to its limits. Every time I fasten it, I think, it’s bound to give way soon and — horror of horrors — I’ll actually have to do some sewing.

But so far, it holds. I cinch my belt tighter, zip up my boots, trudge to Metro — and remind myself that spring is right around the corner.

Sunrise over Metro

Sunrise over Metro

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The built world intrudes but can’t diminish. Sometimes, in fact, it frames and beautifies.

A sunrise ringed by palm fronds would be postcard pretty, but this one is lovely, too.

An ordinary morning, walking through the Metro parking garage, and this is what I see.

 

A Month of Sundays?

A Month of Sundays?

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Furloughed Pentagon employees may have gone back to work, but plenty of federal workers have not, so the commute and the walk are still very much like Sunday.

Instead of parking on the back ramp or the front ramp in the Metro garage, I park on the lower deck. Yesterday afternoon it took me a few minutes to find my car; I’d started looking for it too far back.

In one way, of course, this makes living easy, like I’ve suddenly been upgraded to first class. On the other hand (and I can’t believe I’m saying this), it makes me feel lonely. Where is the jostling, the great burst of pedestrian power? Where are my compatriots?

Tweaking the Commute

Tweaking the Commute

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The general idea is to shorten the commute, find the cut-through, the shortcut, the (quicker) road not taken.

Lately, I’ve done the opposite, adding a longer walk in the afternoon and sometimes (today, for instance) in the morning, too; strolling to a Metro stop farther from my office, savoring the time I spend in the places in between.

En route I think of my great commutes in New York City, walking to and from midtown Manhattan from the Upper West Side and, later on, the Village.

The goal is to exercise, decompress, let the day begin (or end) on a vigorous, active, mind-toggling note. The reality is even better.

Commuting in the Dark

Commuting in the Dark

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The Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the Metro, is well known for single-tracking, off-loading and other commuting horrors. It’s often not given credit for the tens of thousands of folks that it safely transports to and fro every day.

True, it is difficult to understand why it takes two years to repair an escalator, but I imagine there are the usual bureaucratic hurdles to surmount. All this is to say that I hesitate to complain about an “improvement” — but now I’m going to do exactly that.

One thing WMTA does right, at least in my opinion, is it keeps the lights low. When your fleet is aging and your platforms have seen better days, that’s a wise move. But if my stop is any indication, that’s ending. Bright lights now illuminate the top tier of the station. That which was hidden is now revealed. And it’s not a pretty sight.

All those dim platforms and stairways, which gave commuting the blurriness that made it bearable, may be going away. Sunglasses on Metro? That may be next.

The Stair Way

The Stair Way

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A recent escalator accident on Metro has made taking the stairs a more popular option. The trick is finding stairs to take. Because D.C.’s Metro system is so deep underground,  escalators are the conveyance of choice — and they are a finicky bunch. They grumble, they growl, they take months, even years, to repair. And then, a few days ago, a piece of metal tore off the side of one, struck some morning commuters and sent several to the hospital.

I wasn’t anywhere near the mishap but I can imagine the crowding, the dim light, the bone weariness that most of us feel as we slog through our routines and then — without warning — a renegade escalator.

Contrast that with the spanking new stairway at Vienna. It is crisp, it is white, it glistens in the light. Walk up its broad expanse, ascend at your own speed and without the clatter of moving parts. It is the polished floor of a yoga studio, the silent hallway of an empty school at the end of summer. It is a Zen experience. Given a chance, I’ll take the stair way.

Photo: PlanitMetro.com

Decompression

Decompression

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The walk home on a no-car commute day: Leaving the park-and-ride lot on foot — on foot! — as everyone else starts up their cars. The jolt of uneasiness at first. Did I forget something? Did I forget to drive?

No. I arrived here on shank’s mare and will return that way, too. I have everything I need: sturdy sandals on my feet, a body that’s been sitting all day and needs to move, a carry bag where I stash my purse and book.  My two legs will carry me wherever I need to go.

Down the trail I glide, insects humming, bikers blasting past. The trail is much busier at 6 p.m. than it was at 5:30 a.m., so I stay to the right, pick up my pace. The thoughts of the day swirl in my head. The longer I walk, the more they make sense. How many souls through the ages have used their walks home (from the hunt, from the well, from the village) as a way to sort things out?

Walking home: The original way of decompression.