News from the South

November 25, 2007 by enchantingsunshine.

Yesterday, Charlotte opened the new light rail. It took four years to build and it was over budget, but who cares? Seriously. I don’t understand all the public outcry and opposition to the light rail. What is it with American’s hatred of public transport? I love it. Years ago, I spent two months in Barcelona, Spain and my only transportation was my two legs and the subway and I loved every minute of it. I’ve used the subway in other European cities and loved them equally well, but my time in Barcelona proved to me that I wasn’t just romanticizing the idea of public transport as a tourist and not appreciating the real day-to-day life of being without a car.

Similarly, when I was in D.C. last month, my husband and I used the metro to get to the Smithsonian and later, to Georgetown. (I am unyielding about one steadfast rule formed after many bad experiences: absolutely no driving in D.C.) It was so pleasurable to not drive in circles for three hours looking for a parking space, or have people honking angrily at you a millisecond after the light changed to green and you hadn’t run over the hapless pedestrians still crossing the street in front of you. Or to be hopelessly lost because you’re on Fifth Street, NW, which is completely different from Fifth Street, NE, or D Street SW, instead of D Street NW, which is exactly what you deserve getting lost because you were driving around looking for a parking space instead of just paying the freaking $20 for that parking garage near the Smithsonian and getting rid of the car the absolute first second you could. Yes, my rule comes from personal experiences. But using the train, what a pleasure, what a relaxed, fun visit, without any bitter urges to abandon the car or shoot any other drivers in an uncontrolled moment of road-rage.

So when people start their yammering here about how we should have expanded the roads instead of building a light-rail, I stifle my urge to say, and I mean this in the nicest way, “You’re a moron. You know that, don’t you?” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a city where the main thoroughfares are ten lanes wide. Charlotte is already approaching L.A. in our air pollution. Air quality warnings are issued nearly every day in the summer, and I don’t see anything much that the city is doing to make the situation better. The city is going to keep growing because, people are going to keep having babies, and they’ll keep moving here, so seems to me that it’s a good idea to have a plan for how to transport all these people.

The light-rail opened to great interest, double what “authorities” were expecting. I’m thrilled. Hopefully there will be the same interest in ridership tomorrow, when riders have to start paying.

We also dropped my mom at the airport yesterday, with much sadness. How is it that time passes so quickly? Everything becomes a memory so quickly and we have absolutely no control to change it. It’s a mixed blessing of appreciation that living away from home gives one. Perhaps my Project Relocate Family will be a success once I institute it.

And finally…Our Internet and doorbell have been working for fifteen straight days. Therefore, as punishment for all my joy, my laptop has crashed and died. Were I single, I’d add “utterly and irreparably” but my husband has spent the entire day troubleshooting it and seems convinced, naively optimistic sweetheart that he is, that he can fix it. I don’t know what I’d do without him, but I’d probably be in a lot of debt and institutionalized.

Reader, I have a confession to make. This is my fault. I did not make chocolate chip cookie batter sacrifices yesterday as originally planned. With three nearly whole desserts leftover from Thanksgiving, I thought it would be excessive and indulgent. Learn from my errors. Do not challenge the Gods. Make cookie batter sacrifices and appease the Gods for your own safety. It is not worth the suffering that chancing it will visit upon you.

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