As befits Seattle we arrive underground. For reasons unknown to me, we arrive in the smaller and externally more decrepit King Street Station instead of much larger and more ornate Union Station right next door. I am too tired to notice that evening the moderately grand well maintained tiny little lobby by turn of the century before last standards. It even has what looks large internal portholes to complement its functional though ugly square columns. Why I don’t know?
My prior planning included finding the route and schedule of the appropriate express bus rout to the Courtyard hotel I selected two bodies of land east of the train station. It is way too expensive downtown and I could not find any hotels I could reserve with a moderate number of points. Anyway, I knew I needed Sound Transit Express Bus 550. I knew its map location in relation to the station. I even knew the scheduled frequency well enough to adjust to the fact that we arrived more than 30 minutes earlier. [Yes, you heard right. An Amtrak train arrived e-a-r-l-y.]
What I did not take into account is the 3-D nature of this town. First I had to go west to 2nd Street before going east to 5th Street on Jackson. Then I had the choice of walking up two stories via a wide curving concrete stairway or hauling my butt up the incline that is 2nd Street and virtually every other street in town. I choose the street only because I missed the partially concealed stairway in my haste to get moving after sitting for so long. My overheard compatible rolling back with the 18 lb battery and other stuff is actually siting crosswise on my roller-equipped suit bag with no suit. My overstuffed laptop backpack is providing lateral but not vertical stability. What choice would you make if you knew you had a choice?
The bus bay for ST Express 550 is beside a new clean transit court and across the street from an old seedy transit bar. Also across the street is the gate to Chinatown. The Los Angles area Chinatown is just one block west of Union Station. This one is just south of another Union Station. Food for thought.
Out of the bar comes a thin sleek black man wearing a blue King County jumper. His check of the plaque mounted schedule for buss 545 reveals he came out just about on time. When I comment on his good fortune, we start up a conversation. I tell him about Clockwise Around America. He tells me about his life, the short version. Four years ago he was homeless after moving some undisclosed time before from the east coast. Today he is a twice promoted maintenance worker. Proud of it too as he has every right to do. He smokes and he drinks but he has held onto his job. He frequents the seedy bar he used to spend panhandling money in because it is a “man’s bar” where he became a man again.
Nice Guy.
Beside us forming a rough equilateral triangle is a young short pear-shaped African-American girl with a cute face and enough curiosity to kill a cat. Her eyes keep darting to us as our discussion progressed. I ask her if she is taking 545 or 550. When it is clear we will be on the same bus, she tells me how she just missed the prior one that was right on time. That was the bus I missed because I had to go west before east and up two stories not revealed on the flat map.
She fidgets with her pink Palm Centro. I ask her why she is not using a Blackberry that I read is popular with women. Too wide. Too ugly. Plus she turns out to be much young than I thought. She is proud of her pink Centro since there are only three other she knows of in her high school. Clearly she is not a conformist.
When the bus comes, I offer to pay her ticket. She already knows this is only because I have no change and no ones. I will be forced to pay $5 for a $2.50 ticket which I am glad to do to avoid pay over $60 to a cabbie. This allows me to maintain my public transit cred unlike in LA. She owns a monthly pass so I get ready to run my five dollars through the bill reader. To my utmost surprise, the bus driver says: “This time, its on the house”.
We sit near the center joint in the articulating bus. The high rise side seat she clearly expects me to sit in is snatched as I am dealing with my bags. So I sit down in the windowless accordion joint compartment beside and below her.
“Did you go to college?”, she asks. “University of Chicago”, I say. Her plans include Stanford or maybe Cornell. These are schools I considered before settling on Chicago. Before I can stop myself, I ask: “Are your grades good enough to get into those schools”? Before I have time to be embarassed at the rude and potentially discriminatory comment, she cheerfully tells she is a grade A student.
As we talk, I am trying to get either of my two GPS bluetooth units to pick up a satellite signal through the overcast sky and laminated window. Nope. Nothing Nada. I ask her to hold one and then the other closer to window. Still no dice. So I revert to old school methods. I scan the sign posts for names and track or route manually using Google Maps on my cell phone. That’s old school for me. I don’t use paper maps.
