Sounder follow-up

Last week’s blog, recounting my experimental first-time-ever ride on the Sounder, though written on that Friday, didn’t get posted until the following Monday. Today’s blog will also go out this week, since next week is Spring Break, when I’ll be working out of state. The blog will be a follow-up on the preceding, as a commentary on Monday’s and Tuesday’s Sounder commute. This time I took the Sounder because of the rain forecast. Rain may slow down I-5 traffic with inconvenient accidents, but not the Sounder. Yet the more important reason is that when it rains, I tend not to want to walk Pacific Avenue, being not a “singing-in-the-rain” -sort-of-person. Brief explanation: my choices when catching the Seattle-Tacoma Express Bus, is the one leaving shortly after 6 AM and the one leaving shortly around 6:15. But for the latter I have to wait around for 15 to 20 minutes, which is a bore, and for that reason have never been attracted to the idea of standing around fishing. The earlier bus service, however, goes directly from the Dome Station to I-5, skipping downtown, so I get off at the Jack-in-the-Box on 25^th and walk down Pacific and Commerce at 10^th to wait for the #11 bus. A wonderful, sight-variegated walk. Sometimes another Seattle commuter, accompanies me part way, a lawyer who works at the Federal Court House and who shares an interest in history, as well as a boss who is married to one of our deans. This commuting blog should be about what the pass allows you to do on foot, not just on the bus, or Sounder train. More about that in some future posting.

However, for now, back to the Sounder To catch the one leaving the King Street Station at 6:10, I have to leave about 15 minutes earlier than the usual 5:40 AM deadline for catching the first bus. (People who groan about getting up at 7 AM bring no plaintiff strains of sympathetic violins out from me, having grown up on a ranch where before-dawn risings to feed cattle and to check on pregnant heifers were normal.) Now once you are aboard the Sounder, you don’t need to worry about sloppy drivers and bad weather fouling up the traffic on I-5. Though the ride won’t be a smooth one (see previous blog), what you can do, is spread out. You have the run of the roost. Most seats are empty, even the ones with tables. If some yahoo is yakking away on a cell phone, you can find escape into another level of the train carriage, or into another carriage altogether.

Monday morning, because of the change in time, the trip started and ended in darkness, and the upper train level has lost its scenic advantage, so on Tuesday I moved down to the bottom train level, to a different riding experience. Down there the train doesn’t seem to lumber along, but instead seems veritably to race along, without many bumps and grinds. When “rosy-fingered dawn” and visible daylight eventually reappear, I may move back up, or perhaps not. A question of comfort vs. scenic vistas.

Wallace, Faculty