Himillsy for RAC

Sometimes I'm not sure why I still live here.

And then I remember: my mother-in-law is here. Right.

Anyway, I left NoVA on the Blue line at 8:20 this morning. The train kept stalling in the tunnel. The conductor said this was due to "mechanical problems" in the train in front of us. Sometime around Rosslyn, there was a blue spark outside the car and we lost power. By 9:20, we'd pulled into Foggy Bottom, where we were unceremoniously dumped. I walked the rest of the way to my office, arriving sometime before 10:00.

Of course, there were no mechanical problems. There was a "suspicious package" somewhere else on the line. And the blue spark? Stopping at Foggy Bottom? Well, who knows the deal there.

What I do know is that if I am going to continue to take this stupid train every day for the rest of my life or until we finally move to a humble homestead with attached recording studio somewhere in Oregon, I can't keep up the lemming-like reliance on the system to sort itself out.

Thankfully, WMATA is searching for members to fill up its Rider Advisory Council. Who would like to bet with me whether those selected are regular riders of rail and bus, or even patrons of systems in New York, San Francisco, London and Paris? Will they have even ridden Metro in the last year? How many own and drive cars on days when Metro is unreliable (like, say, the month of January)?

Insert laughter. Acerbic laughter. And the requisite Metro board joke.

Apply here.