twice in one day

May 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I've ridden the subway for two round-trips in the last 24 hours, which I think is cool. An odd thing, though... Today, twice, I had the train stop outside of a station, apparently waiting for space to clear.

This morning it was on the Red Line coming into Union Station. We sat still for a minute or two waiting for a train to clear the platform before continuing on. As we began to move you could see the other train waiting to use the cross-over and get back to the westbound side.

This afternoon the stop was high above the LA river, directly above the Gold Line maintenance facility. We were at a complete stop for 45 seconds to a minute, and then continued as normal into Chinatown. What I found odd about this stop was that it's a good ways from there to the Chinatown station, so if we were indeed waiting for a train to clear there it would have seemed we could have gotten closer first.

Funny story about the stop above the LA River: Because of riding with the bike, I end up in the single seats right up against the drivers compartment (though not in the front car). This gives me a view to face sort of back, toward the rest of the passengers. In the first few rows was a Asian family with two small children, a boy and a girl. The boy was fascinated by the views, and he really enjoyed getting to stop up so high. With nothing else to do, I was sitting there watching him study our surroundings: the river, the buildings, etc.

"Look!," he said, "A drain! A big drain!"

Or that was what I thought he said. Then I realized he actually said train, and was pointing at a freight train parked alongside the river. Both, I think, were apt for our location.

Music: Joe Purdy and friends

May 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So I was at the Hotel Cafe for about a half hour last night, which is a story I'm not going to get into here. Anyway, I caught the tail end of Joe Purdy's set and all I can find to say is, "Where did this guy come from?" I've seen Joe Purdy before. I'm heard the tracks on his site. He's really good. But, he's also put girls that were with me to sleep on two separate instances (ok, so in the second one I didn't go out and say it, but that time we left early so Kathy didn't fall asleep).

But not last night.

Last night Joe Purdy was playing with one or two electric guitars (depending on the song), a bass, a drummer, and who knows what else. It was upbeat, but it was still definitely his music.

Very cool stuff. I'm hoping to get back out next week and catch the whole show.

a little face time?

May 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Today is Metro's Bike To Work Day. Even though my bike's been messing with me lately I hopped on and headed over to 5th and Hill to catch the red line. I got downstairs just as a train was pulling out, so I got to wait the full 5 minutes for the next one. That's the second time in less than 24 hours I've had my hand on the door of a train just after the doors closed.

At Union Station I was about to pick up my bike and climb the stairs when I got approached by a girl working for Metro's PR department (I think she actually said the MTA... isn't that verboten these days? "Call us Metro"). She was looking for bike to work day stories, and asked me the usual questions of whether I knew what today was ("yes"), if I rode specifically because it was bike to work day ("i made a point of it"), and why I did this rather than drive ("because it's more fun"). She also took a picture, which featured me standing in front of a gold line car next to my bike, helmet on, hair flowing out from underneath, and wearing a "Westside Baseball" half-sleeve. I hope they use that for something. I'll have to keep an eye on the site.

As I tend to do when I switch from car to bike, I forgot my JPL badge today, which means I get to walk around with a temporary printed badge sticker on my shirt. I even had the badge in my hand this morning, when I went to grab it and my headphones. The headphones made it here, the badge didn't.

still with the car

May 19, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Got up and drove into work today, and realized it was the first time I've ever driven north on Hill. Multiple times I had to think about whether I was on the right street, since downtown just looks so different depending on which direction you're coming at it.

In general the plan is to ride my bike into work, but today I drove so that I could run something by Pasadena City College to finish my application process and try and get accepted to take Spanish there. This language requirement's been after me since I first got to USC, so this summer I'm going to try and wipe it out all at once. It's going to be interesting. My last Spanish of any kind was half a semester of Spanish II my first semester here. Before that it was Freshman and Sophomore years of high school. The curve to get back up to speed might be rough.

Last night Magilla and I were trying to figure out options for late night food downtown, but ended up giving in and driving back to USC to grab Del Taco. That sort of acclimation to the new place is going to take some time.

the weekend that was

May 17, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I've started three or four posts here in the last day or two and haven't finished any of them. Oh well.

Saturday we finally got all moved out of City Park. Cleaning and the last bits of moving out took all day, starting at probably 10 and ending just after 5. It ended up well, though: our inspection went fine and we'll be getting all of the deposit back. Now I'm officially a resident of downtown.

Saturday night the Lakers won, as everyone knows by now. I watched the game over at Kathy's, but on the way back couldn't resist driving by Staples. It wasn't the best route time-wise, but it was fun to be surrounded by people honking their horns and generally being excited about the game.

Today my ethernet transceiver got here, so I booted the old Personal IRIS up with that. I've been messing with a handful of utilities I want to get installed on it to try and figure out a way to make the machine at least fun, if not useful. None are really wanting to compile cleanly on a 15 year old OS, though. That'll take some work.