The last leg of my long trip home. I loved every minute of this ride.
When I was twenty one years old, I moved away from my country lake childhood home and the luscious green gardens of my university to the nitty gritty city of Chicago. And promptly, I became a public transit lady.
What a life. I loved hopping from bus to L train to even a full scale commuter train to weave my way around the city. For a few dollars a day, I could get to wherever I wanted to go, hanging by a strap in a dark subway on a sweaty summer afternoon, snapping a Wall Street Journal out in front of me for a nice browse through the paper on my way to the office, or giggling with my tipsy girlfriends as we headed home together after Friday happy hour. Even after several years went by and I finally bought a car, I left it parked on the street all week long. My good ol' Grand Prix was for interstate travel; I roamed the city on public transit.
How rudely I was awakened when I moved to Seattle. Back in 1986, the city's public transit system consisted of a handful of buses and an underfunded dream. Patiently, I waited and voted and took advantage of the puny local bus system whenever I could. Many, many years passed.
Slowly, inexorably, Seattle's Link light rail system came to life. The first Sound Transit cars began to rumble along tracks near the airport in 2003, and have gradually hiccuped north over the years. When the Northgate station opened in October, 2021, bringing Line 1 all the way from the airport to within striking distance of my house, I felt a seismic shift.
And so it was that on my return home from Columbus this week,
I jumped off my plane,
hauled myself through baggage claim,
across the sky bridge,
along the edge of the parking garage,
and down the hall to the light rail platform.
As I stepped out into the cool night air to await the next northbound train, I breathed deep and sighed with contentment. Once again, I've become a public transit lady and the city is mine to roam.
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Read the story of my first trip since Covid to visit my daughter in Ohio, told from finish to start.
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