No DriveCam to set off this year…
5 minute read
February 2, 2016, 6:46 PM
This past Wednesday, Elyse and I went to the Washington Auto Show. We checked out the cars, and then went down to see the Metrobus display. This year, Metro had an Xcelsior artic on display. Remembering last year where I inadvertently set off the DriveCam on the demo bus, I was surprised to see that there was no DriveCam on the demo bus this year:
Continue reading…Categories: Elyse, Events, Washington DC, WMATA
Snowzilla!
5 minute read
January 24, 2016, 10:55 PM
So the “Snowzilla” (as named by The Washington Post) storm has come and gone, and it left a large pile of snow in its wake – enough to kill part of the roof of the Safeway in Bel Air, Maryland, and the roof of Wayne Lanes in Waynesboro, Virginia. Thankfully, I came through this storm just fine, and it was just a matter of digging out. This storm dropped light, powdery snow (as compared to wet, heavy snow), and there was a lot of it. I got more snow on my balcony in this storm than I did in 2009 and 2010’s major winter storms, for one. Check this out:
Categories: Kia Soul, Winter weather
Fun with music…
3 minute read
December 20, 2015, 12:41 PM
This past Thursday, among other places, Elyse and I checked out a store called Bill’s Music in Catonsville. What a wonderful place this was, with professional-grade equipment for sale at professional-grade prices (but you’re paying for quality). The store has every single piece of musical equipment that you could imagine, including some stuff I hadn’t seen in years, like real xylophones and such. Elyse actually knows a thing or two about music, unlike me.
The first thing that we discovered was a metallic xylophone (metallophone?). I hadn’t played one of these since sixth grade music class, a six-week “exploratory” course at Stuarts Draft Middle School. It was pretty awesome, working not so much with singing, but mostly with musical instruments – primarily xylophones. We learned some very basic songs on them, and apparently I still remember a couple of them:
Categories: Baltimore County, Elyse, Middle school, Music, Today's Special, WMATA
What happens to a retired Champion…
3 minute read
October 23, 2015, 10:51 PM
After visiting Diamond Point Plaza just east of Baltimore, Elyse and I set our sights on something else, which she had spotted on South Newkirk Street a few weeks prior. I’m talking about this:
An afternoon at the Trolley Museum…
4 minute read
September 22, 2015, 11:20 PM
This past Sunday, I was at the National Capital Trolley Museum with Elyse. Unlike most days, where they only run one or two streetcars, this particular day, they were running four. They were running a streetcar from Brussels (by way of Grand Cypress Resort in Florida), a streetcar from New York City’s Third Avenue Railway, the 1971 PCC car from The Hague, as well as an open-air car referred to as “the boat“. We got to ride the first three, but the boat had already been brought in for the day by the time we got there. Ah, well, there’s always next time, as I literally only live two and a half miles away.
These are the cars that we got to ride. First, the former Brussels car:
Categories: Elyse, Silver Spring, Transit, WMATA
While hunting for a photo…
4 minute read
August 29, 2015, 9:29 PM
Yesterday, I was hunting through my archives to find a photo to show a friend. My photo archives are arranged by subject and by date. If I took a bunch of photos in a single day, then all of those photos typically go into a folder marked with the general subject of the photos and the date. One-off photos usually get dated, marked with their subject, and get put in a folder with all of the one-off shots for the month. The photo that I was looking for depicted a bus sign after the normal text for that route had changed. So I knew what it was, and knew what the photo looked like. I also knew that the photo was a one-off, since I took the photo at Glenmont on the way home from work. However, I didn’t remember exactly when I took it. I had an approximate range for when I took it, but didn’t quite know. So that meant that I needed to hunt.
First of all, I was successful in finding the photo. Here it is, dated September 24, 2012:
Categories: House, Photography, Schumin Web meta, Washington DC, WMATA, Work
The speed van…
6 minute read
July 29, 2015, 9:04 PM
While I was out yesterday, I spotted this van parked on the side of Bonifant Road in Greater Silver Spring (Colesville) near the Trolley Museum and the Intercounty Connector bridge:
This is a white Ford Transit Connect van, with the “Montgomery County Safe Speed” logo on the driver’s side door. This struck me as something that merited further investigation, because the county has been using Bonifant Road to raise revenue through speed enforcement for years. I’ve seen police sitting on the road, and there have been fixed speed camera boxes in various places along this road over the years.
Categories: Driving, Silver Spring
Finally, a road photo that I didn’t have to research…
2 minute read
July 11, 2015, 10:12 PM
Whenever I find a photo online showing something amusing on the road, I always like to find out the location. I’ve become rather skilled at looking at background details in photos to sleuth out locations after posting and geotagging countless photos on Panoramio, as well as researching filming locations for Project TXL (a planned overhaul of the Today’s Special site). So imagine my delight to see this funny road photo, showing Thomas the Tank Engine being transported on the back of a truck:
Photo: Imgur
Categories: Harrisonburg, Popular culture, Roads, Today's Special
Yes, I made it to New York City…
2 minute read
June 13, 2015, 3:55 AM
Just in case the current photo feature’s being of One World Trade Center didn’t tip you off, I’m happy to say that yes, I did recently make it to New York City for that day trip that I had wanted to do on my birthday but quickly realized that I couldn’t do. So I regrouped, and did it the way that works best for me: planned in advance. I got together with my friend Doreen, and we went up on June 9. And here’s proof:
Doreen got this photo of me at the 81st Street subway station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line.
Categories: Friends, New York City, New York Subway
Augusta County puts enforcement cameras on its school buses…
10 minute read
May 20, 2015, 12:09 PM
I recently read in an article in The News Leader that Augusta County Public Schools, where I went to middle and high school, is partnering up with the local sheriff’s office to outfit two of its school buses with cameras. These particular cameras are mounted on the exterior of the bus, on the left side, and are designed to catch people who pass a stopped school bus while their red warning lights are flashing. Normally, drivers in all directions are supposed to come to a complete stop when the bus’s red warning lights are flashing and the stop arm is out.
Now we all know better than to think that this always happens. I’ve written about school bus stops before, in regards to whether a right turn that begins just beyond a stopped school bus and moves away from it is a legal movement, or if it’s not. I casually asked a Montgomery County police officer about this one time while I was out and about, and he said that it wasn’t a legal move, describing the area where drivers are required to come to a full stop for a school bus as being like a bubble, rather than as a line of demarcation. I would have loved for the move that I described to have been legal, because then I could just zip past and be on my way. But apparently, it’s not.
Also, for those of you who have never driven a large vehicle before, let me let you in on something: if you think that the people around you drive like wackos when you’re in your car, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve watched drivers around a large vehicle. The “wacko” factor gets turned up to eleven when you’re driving a large vehicle. After all, large vehicles are very different than your car. They’re big, they’re heavy, and they’re slow. And in the case of school and transit buses, they make frequent stops. Drivers in cars know that, and as such, will do anything, even some very unsafe/illegal moves, to get past or otherwise not have to wait for a bus. I have been cut off in just about every way imaginable when I’m driving the bus, and I don’t get special privileges like school buses get, i.e. I don’t get to stop all traffic when I’m boarding and alighting passengers. And even if I could, fellow road users are still very poorly behaved and would stop at nothing to get past or around me while I was stopped, threat of ticket or not.
Categories: Driving, School buses, Transit, Virginia local news
Fun in Philadelphia…
7 minute read
April 28, 2015, 11:29 PM
Back at the end of March, I went up to Philadelphia with my friends Melissa and Elyse. We had a list of things that we wanted to do, and we did as many of them as we could. We had a blast, plus we got to meet up with my cousins Mike and Tara for dinner. This trip was also a proof of concept for how my various little outings might go now that I routinely work late nights, since my typical workday runs from approximately 4:00 PM until just before 2:00 AM.
Logistically, it worked out this way: Melissa met me at Glenmont station around 11:00, and then we traveled up to Howard County to get Elyse. Then from there, up to Philadelphia via I-95. Then in Philadelphia, everything that we were planning was transit-accessible, save for one thing, but we worked it all out pretty well.
Our first point of interest was the non-transit-accessible one: the SS United States. This would be a quick look-see for some photos, and then move along to other targets. We parked at the IKEA store across the street, and then Elyse and I walked over for a look (Melissa stayed in the car). Here are pix:
I have ridden the 7000-Series…
4 minute read
April 15, 2015, 8:30 AM
Back in late March, Metro announced that the new 7000-Series railcars, which I toured in January of last year, would enter revenue service on Tuesday, April 14, on the Blue Line. So on that day, I got together with Elyse, and we sought out and rode Metro’s new 7000-Series railcars on their first day of revenue service. We met up in late afternoon, and we took the Red Line down to Metro Center from Glenmont. At Metro Center, we waited for the train. Elyse and I had been in communication with Metro’s social media team as we were making our way in, and they helped us with our planning, as they indicated when the train was entering service in the evening, how long it would be out, and where it was located, and in which direction it was heading.
And we watched the PIDS screens. We knew that the train would be eight cars, because the 7000-Series is designed to run in quad sets rather than married pairs. So when we saw something like this come up on the board, our ears definitely perked up:
Categories: Elyse, Washington DC, WMATA
How stupid do they think that I am?
2 minute read
March 31, 2015, 1:08 AM
I recently received an envelope in the mail that looked like this:
I saw this envelope, with just an address and what appeared to be a handwritten address, and thought “bill”, since this is how I’ve seen some smaller doctors’ offices do billing.
Categories: Companies, Kia Soul, Some people
Growing out the beard…
6 minute read
February 25, 2015, 2:44 AM
This past Sunday, I really came to realize that I have, as TV Tropes would say, started “growing the beard” when it comes to driving a bus. It’s about getting past all of the newness and figuring out how it all really works, and starting to, you know, become proficient at what you’re doing. When it comes to jobs, if a person is a good fit with the organization, they grow out their beard within the first few months after whatever training period ends. If the beard doesn’t grow, then it’s possible that they’re not a good fit, and that often ends with a parting of ways.
Me, I’ve grown my (figurative) beard out quite nicely. I have a run of my own, meaning that my assignment does not change much from week to week. I do the same thing every weekday, and I do the same Saturday and Sunday schedules every week. When the transit agency that I work for cut me loose to work my own assignment for the first time, I was a bit overwhelmed. I was at a different bus garage than the one that I had trained at after having been unexpectedly reassigned at the end of training (about half the class was also moved from where they had trained), and I had never done a street relief in the middle of a route before.
For those not familiar, a street relief is how some bus routes work. The buses are out on the street all day, and the operators just cycle on and off of them. One guy takes a bus out of the garage, and then at a designated location, he hands the bus off to another operator. That next guy takes the bus for however long, and then gives the bus to someone else. That keeps going until the last guy gets the bus, and he brings it back to the garage.
I can’t believe I set off the DriveCam…
6 minute read
January 28, 2015, 7:57 PM
I had a good bit of fun on Tuesday. I went down to the Washington Auto Show at the Washington Convention Center with Elyse, and we wandered through, seeing all sorts of interesting things. We took the Red Line to Gallery Place, then took the 70 bus up to the Convention Center (and we got an artic).
Unlike most car shows that I’ve been to in my 33 years, this was primarily for auto manufacturers to show off new cars. As such, it was heavy on the marketing, and you could touch and interact with most of the vehicles that were there. If you go on a Tuesday, as we did, the place was pretty quiet. No wait for tickets and security, and no wait to see or do anything, and more time to chat it up with people.
Right off the bat, with its being a slow day, Elyse and I could tell that the people working the event were in a good mood. When I purchased my ticket, the guy mentioned that admission, normally $12.00, was only $10.00 with a SmarTrip, or $5.00 with a student ID. My old JAC card from my college days still lives on my keychain over a decade after I graduated college. I said, “I still have my old student ID from when I was in college.” The guy sold me a ticket at the student rate, and justified it by saying that it just says “a student ID”, and not that you had to be a current student.
Categories: Elyse, Events, Washington DC, WMATA