A Bunch of Stuff ...

A lot of things to hit tonight, so let's roll ...

1. America is Deaf!!!

I have seen, or rather should I say heard, the proof of this. Look, I understand the desire to have music with you when riding public transportation. It's pretty likely that you don't want to listen to the asshole stranger next to you fart or blow his nose or talk about taxes in Quebec, whatever.

However, the effect of this is pretty much canceled out when you, Ms. MARC person or Mr. Metro rider, play your music on your iPod or whatever you have so loud that the rest of the train can hear it. And what the fuck, most of the time, y'all are playing some shit music! The woman next to me on Tuesday morning on the MARC seemed nice enough, but when she played some artist who may as well have gone by the stage name "Whiny ass white dude," well you don't really have to wonder why the rest of us thought you were crazy. I'm sure you are nice. But I worry about your mental state listening to the weird stuff you had playing.

America must be deaf. That must be the only reason why y'all play your music that damn loud.

So, I'monna get you back. I'monna download a bunch of Conway Twitty, then play it at full volume at about 6:40 a.m. on the MARC. It will be enough to drown out your crappy tunes and pretty much annoy everyone.

Revenge is sweet.

2. MARC ... the Yugo of Trains

I really wonder sometimes if the trains used by MARC are really any different than that beat up old Lionel train set your grandpop had when you were a kid that was all set up under the Christmas tree and then is ruined when Uncle Bobby has too much egg nog and does a face plant right in the middle of the display just before dinner.

This week, it seems like every train they have is breaking down. There were 2 or 3 today and thankfully I drove. But the e-mail alerts that the Maryland Transit Administration sends out are comical. They aren't even in English - it's a combo of drunkenese and textese, and they show up in your e-mail account about an hour after what ever incident has occurred and already screwed everything up.

Some day, one of the MARC locomotives is just going to fall apart in 1,074 pieces as it leaves Union Station. ... Just like Grandpop's model display after Hurricane Bobby.

3. Metro Driver from the Good Side of Hell

I have found my favorite Metro driver. On a crowded red line train Tuesday, the dude driving was sick and tired of people's analytical shit apparently. At the various stops, as people tried to crowd into the train, our hero would take the mic and yell: "STAND BACK!!! THIS TRAIN IS FULL! WAIT FOR THE NEXT ONE!"

And he was right, the next train was only 2 minutes behind. But 2 minutes is too much for most fucking people - God help them if they are delayed two more minutes in getting home to what remains of their crappy lives. No, they'd rather push through a door and then bitch and moan when their bag gets stuck in the door, or they get the train and their bag doesn't, which is awesome. It's no wonder Metro reports so many door problems. The doors are fine (except Jim Morrison, he's dead), it's the people that should be taken out of service. I was glad to see a driver not take any crap from them.

4. We've Outgrown Public Transportation

I'll start this off with a disclaimer. Look, I'm a little bigger than I need to be. I'm not an offensive lineman or nothing, but I look about 4 months along if you catch my drift. And hey, like Peyton Manning says, if you are over the age of 23 and not a football player, you may as well just buy bigger shirts.

But look here - I don't write this to mock our portly mass transit friends. As a country, we have an obesity problem, and it's gonna kill more of us quicker than terrorists or Mist or zombies or the lack of promotion/relegation in MLS.

However, I bring this up because there is a serious problem with public transportation. IT WASN'T MADE FOR BIG PEOPLE! Those that are big and big in the saddle were left out of consideration 30-40 years ago when most of the modes of public transportation were constructed. And hey, I get it. We weren't as fat back then. But now? We loves our McDonald's and our steaks and all that. And hey, I do too. I'm not innocent in this, and I'm not poking fun at anyone. But it's a sad fact of life that we have outgrown our means of public transportation when you have, for example, the single-decker cars on the MARC with the 2-aisle-3 setup of seats. Invariably, when the train is packed, you are going to have a 3-seat set where some unfortunate person (like me on Monday), gets crushed by someone in the middle who, if you put them in a football jersey, would be the whole 3-4 defense. It's not their fault - they gotta sit somewhere. But you are pretty much playing Buffet Roulette when you get on a train now as to whether you will be able to breathe for the next 35 minutes or not. And hey, other people have probably thought that when I sit next to them, so again, I ain't picking on no one. But it's true, and we as a nation ain't gonna get no thinner, so I don't know how you solve the problem.

Be careful, rail warriors.

MDR

PS: OK, actually, now that I think about it ... I'm not fat, I'm festively plump.

Time Flies, But People are Still Stupid

OK, so it's been a couple weeks. I was off for a couple days, drove another couple, so I haven't been on the trains and subways of Washington, D.C., and suburban Maryland much lately. But fear not, I got stuff to talk about.

There's lots to get to and lots of people to call out, so instead of letters, we're gonna hit him up with a cascade of bullets ...

• Old People are Stupid: Last Thursday, me and some friends (blog readers, as well!) attended the Georgetown-Michigan basketball game at Verizon Center. After the game, I had to catch the Red Line back to work where my car was parked. This meant leaving from the Gallery Place Metro that is underneath the arena. Now, hundreds of other people were trying to do the same thing, so the platform was crowded - mostly with Georgetown students. Now, these are Georgetown students, mind you, so they should be pretty smart. And to their credit, they all handled the situation very well, even if not all of them were sober. However, there were two older gentlemen in different parts of the crowd that must have been late for a big Matlock date. When the train showed up and the doors opened, they began trying to shove their way through the mass of people to get to the train. This left the college kids legitimately wondering, "What the Fuck," and led me to blurt out ... "the more you push me, the slower I'll go. And I'm fat, so I know how to go slow." Perhaps I should work as a comedian on college campuses, because I hit the jackpot with the Georgetown kids with that line. It also didn't hurt I guess that I was wearing a Georgetown hat. The old folks really didn't say anything, but the pushing and shoving stopped. Fucking asshats. People don't get smarter with age, folks, they just find more creative ways to piss the rest of us off.
• Reading is Fundamental: To the book reader on the MARC this morning that decided she had to sit next to me. Look, if you really need the middle seat in those 3-2 seating arrangements MARC has on their single-decker cars - hey, that's fine. I would never take that seat, trying to plunk my fat ass down between two asshole strangers who don't want me there, but hey you want to sit, I get the point. What I didn't need was the point of your elbow in my side for the last 20 miles of my trip to Union Station this morning - being drilled deeper into my side every time you turned the page of your fake little romance novel. Here, let me sum it up for you. The woman doesn't get the guy. The guy goes to jail for banging a Thai prostitute, little Jimmy doesn't really like girls, the puppy runs away, and the pet chimp dies when he gets his hand caught in the coffee maker. There. There's your fucking book. Just as much of a clusterfuck as a Columbus Crew playoff game. So see? You didn't even need to be reading it. I just saved you the time. So tomorrow, you can pick another seat and just sit there, and not try and remove my spleen by turning pages. I really don't think you are licensed for such medical work.
  
• 4 Calling Birds, 3 French Hens, 2 Diet Pepsis ... : So I missed my 6:43 train this morning, which meant I had to wait until 7:13. I was thirsty and there is a vending machine at the stop I go to in the mornings. For $1, you can get one of those 20-ounce Diet Pepsi bottles. Apparently it's Christmas or whatever holiday bottles of Pepsi celebrate, because when I put in my dollar and hit the button, it gave me two bottles. There's really no joke here, I just thought it was cool. And what the fuck exactly is a French hen?
  
• The Real Drew Carey Would've Scored: A while back on the way home, it was one of those crowded days on the 5:20 train and with 25 minutes before the first stop, conversations are sure to spark up in some parts of the train. On this day, one of the standing-in-the-aisle people was a dead ringer for Drew Carey. He had the funny head, the glasses, the voice, the works. Oh yeah, he didn't have the sense of humor. See, if you look like Drew Carey, but you are funny like Drew Carey, you are gonna score. Some women will sleep with guys if the guy makes them laugh - even if they aren't great looking. Hell, I know, how else could I possibly get laid? That said, if you look like Drew Carey (or me), and you have no sense of humor at all? Yeah, no soup (so to speak) for you. It was almost painful to watch really, as the Bizarro Carey worked his magic in the aisle on a woman that I guess he knew who was sitting in one of the seats. She tried to exit the conversation more times than me on the Jersey Turnpike looking for a pizza place (few of you are gonna get that joke, but that's OK). Bizarro Carey was the only one on the train who didn't realize that his grand plan wasn't working. The woman got off (exited, not what you are thinking) at BWI, and Bizarro Carey stood there with a weird smile on his face as if to say, "Yeah, I got somewhere. Next week I'll get her number." Sorry, bud, I've been there before. No. No you won't. This isn't the script where the sexy brunette has to talk to you because it's in her contract. This was you striking out more than Mo Vaughn.
  
• And Another Thing: There was a dude today who I don't think was a MARC regular who was standing in the aisle next to my seat on the 5:20 coming home. He had some big-ass man purse (that's not a euphemism for the size of his ass or anything, I mean he had a big-ass man purse) that was swinging at his side. And it kept flying into my seat's air space. I don't like that shit. But I didn't want to say anything - because let's be honest here people, if I handled every situation with politeness and tact, then there'd be nothing to write about here and I couldn't try and entertain y'all. So what good that do? Anyway, I decided that I would use my arm as sort of a fence to my seat's air space. And every time the dude's man purse started flying toward my space, it would hit my hand and I would push it back, which would cause him to lose his balance while the train was moving 100 mph, and he would have to struggle to keep his feet. The funny part was, I don't think he ever realized what was causing it. A couple minutes later, the man purse would come flying back again, I would push it the other way, dude would go flying. In retrospect, I should have tripped him, too.
  

Meanwhile, Metro still has door problems, and MARC is still overcrowded. Given that Thursday is Thanksgiving, I am thankful for these things - because it allows me to see people at their worst, and it gives me something to write about when I get home.

Stay safe, rail warriors.

Signed,
MDR

Oh, and by the way ...

... See now, you heard this shit here first.

Did I not tell you last week that Metro was still having problems with "smoke?" And no one was paying attention. But if you are reading here, you are smart, so you knew.

The 10 Ewoks and the Wookiee at Metro Headquarters will forgive me for not being surprised at all to hear that the Pentagon station was closed today due to a track fire.

Shocking. I know.

I'm telling you - and I don't even post this to be a scare-mongerererererererer, but ... something really bad is on the way for Metro in the near future. There's just too much weird shit going on with door problems and smoke and fire and trains breaking down and whatever else to read the fare cards any other way.

I'm just praying I'm not in the area when it happens.

Course, if I had that kind of luck - this blog wouldn't exist.

Stay safe, rail warriors.

MDR

Et tu, Brutus?

So apparently, driving to work isn't any picnic, either.

Yesterday, I had to drive to work (45 miles each way yo) because the monthly MARC/Metro ticket I had ordered hadn't arrived yet. Fine, whatever. I was going out after work anyway, so it was better to have my own transportation.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned ticket didn't show up one more again, so I had to drive to work again today. And it was raining, which means in this area that everyone slows down and goes 12 mph because rain, you see, is radioactive and causes cars going above 12 mph to melt in place, sending their drivers and back-seat passengers to a special 8th circle of Hell that contains nothing but SUVs and burning cups of Starbucks. You may ask what happens to the passengers ... they go to Heaven. No one knows why.

Anyway, I get to work today a bit later than usual, lock my car and notice my right front tire looks odd. Almost as if it had blown a bubble or something. So I took it to the nearby Merchants Tire after work, and was informed that my tire had an impact bubble (kinky). And of course, it needs to be replaced. The reason? Said impact bubble comes about from hitting a pothole. So yes folks, the MARC is overcrowded, the Metro is filled with crazy people on trains that don't go nowhere, and the roads are deadly, if not to the people, than to the tires carrying the people. Seriously, this is insane.

The dude at Merchants said the bubble was a little one (they have pills for that), and that I should be able to get it home. Though it was comforting to hear him say that at some point, the tire is going to explode. Great. In retrospect, I could have had them put the spare on, but the spare tire on my car has a lot of miles on it, so I thought that might have been iffy. So I trudged on home, literally counting off each mile, where I was in relation to the next Merchants (the tires are under warranty, so I'll save some cash anyway), and how close I was to home. Of course, this is the night that folks decide to get crazy with the cheese whiz on 795 and close it with a big wreck, sending everyone on to another road with 14134 traffic lights, and yeah, it took forever to get home.

I skipped Merchants and just went home. I had some dinner, I'm watching hockey, I'm drinking beer, and I ain't going anywhere. I go to Merchants in the morning.

If some other form of transportation doesn't rise up and kill my ass first.

MDR

Sorry for the Delay in Posting ...

... I was stuck in a Metro train.

OK, not literally. I haven't been on a Metro train for 4 days, although at times, it felt like that was going to be the case.

Last week, I had to be on the Metro on Thursday evening and then for work on Friday. I don't really have any stories to tell about people during those times, everyone was pretty well behaved.

But let me 'splain something here.

Metro runs the subway. This is their job. They take the subway cars, they put them on the track, they make them go by whatever means they use to make them go, and they go from stop to stop and that's that.

Yet, Metro can't do that. The system does not work. DOES. NOT. WORK.

On three straight trips on the Metro during Thursday and Friday, I ended up in a Subway car that had to sit and wait because the one in front of it broke down. How is that possible? What are the chances? Think about it! Three in a row! I counted, it cost me 91 minutes of time. 91 fucking minutes, sitting on a Metro train, not moving anywhere, because the Metro trains do not work.

Not to mention the fact, as a friend mentioned recently in a message board discussion about the topic - the system is screwed to start with because when something breaks, there's no where to go around it. And usually, another train has to be taken out of service, with more passengers displaced, so that that train can then push the other broken train out of the way into a track switch, etc. So you basically have two trains (12-16 cars), out of commission.

And this happens every day. It happened to me three trips in a row!!! Seriously, if there is a Vegas oddsmaker reading this, I want the odds on that happening to anyone. They have to be astronomical.

So here I am, back to my blog. Finally safe and sound at home. I may have to take the Metro tomorrow afternoon.

Pray for me.

Signed,
Marc D. Rider