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Posted on 08.23.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:51 pm
Here’s some helpful advice for tea partiers who will be visiting the nation’s capital in coming weeks for various political events:
The warning reminded me of a scary experience I had not long after moving to Washington. While I was in graduate school at American University, I had to interview one of the leaders of the Libertarian Party for a paper, so I arranged an interview at the party’s headquarters. I soon wished I had conducted the interview by phone because party HQ was in one of the worst part’s of Washington. I had worked in Washington for a couple of years by that point, but I lived in Virginia and didn’t really know much about the city. I generally only knew how to get to work by Metro and how to get to the most famous sites so I could play tour guide when family and friends visited. None of those areas seemed particularly dangerous, even to an easily intimidated small-town boy like me. But I knew Southeast was the wrong part of town when I noticed all of the graffiti and the bars on every business’ windows. I really became scared when my cab driver tried to convince me to let him drop me off on the wrong side of the street from the Libertarian Party’s office and about a quarter-mile past all the businesses. I demanded that he make a u-turn and drop me at the office. After the interview, which was in late fall, I was horrified to realize that there wasn’t a cab in sight for me to hail back into a safer part of town. I had to walk to the nearest Metro station, which was two or three blocks away. It was the spookiest walk of my life. When I told my classmates the next day where I had been, they all thought I was nuts for going to Southeast. I wish they had been so forthcoming about D.C.’s bad neighborhoods before the interview. Filed under: Culture and Travel Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.20.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:25 pm
Truer words about Virginia Railway Express were never spoken than these by VRE chief executive Dale Zehner in the latest “Train Talk” e-mail distributed yesterday: “This summer has been a difficult one for VRE staff and riders alike.” In a span of less than two months, I earned seven free-ride certificates because of lengthy VRE delays. Two were the result of train breakdowns ahead of the one I was riding and a third was caused by a power failure on my train. Flash-flood warnings forced VRE to putt along at about five miles an hour during two other commutes. I’ve forgotten what caused the other two delays. All but two of the delays occurred in the evenings, so they seriously cut into my family time during the week. All told, I lost more than seven hours of my life, basically an extra work day, because VRE couldn’t get its act together. Before all the troubles started, I was a VRE fan; now I’m a perpetual critic of the system, on this blog, Facebook and my Twitter account (@Danny_Glover). I hope Zehner was serious when he wrote this:
VRE already has lost my loyalty — the only reason I’m still riding is because I’d lose at least twice as many hours of my life driving into Washington or to the Metro every day — and it definitely will have to earn my trust again. Filed under: Business and D.C. Commuter Diary and People Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.19.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 7:07 pm
I spend most of my commute on Virginia Railway Express — that’s another whiny story — but I do take a brief trips on Metro each day, from L’Enfant Plaza to Metro Center and back. I exit Metro Center at G and 12 streets. The escalators there have worked maybe 15 percent of the time since I joined the David All Group. Today I noticed the chicken-scratched sign above. Metro’s incompetence even extends to signage. What, you raise our fares twice this summer but still can’t afford a good sign? Sadly, the failures of our capital city’s public transportation are escalating (pun intended). Here’s a telling nugget from a May column in the Washington Examiner:
All the more reason to appreciate the all-too-brief respite I had as a telecommuter. Filed under: D.C. Commuter Diary and Government Comments: None |
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Posted on 06.28.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 10:02 pm
I want to love Virginia Railway Express, I really do. But VRE is making it tough these days. I was excited back in April when I accepted a job at a firm whose office location is convenient enough to make VRE a cost-effective commuting option. The VRE commute also saves me time — 1-1/2 hours one way vs. more than two by car — and stress. I’d rather read, play iPhone games or sleep all the way into Washington than idle behind the wheel in traffic. For the most part, I have enjoyed the VRE commute the last two months. One morning last week, I tweeted about how cool it was to see a deer and wild turkeys in the clearings along the tracks. But everything started going wrong that very day. A train breakdown commute doubled my evening commute, and we experienced delays the next two mornings and evenings. Then tonight, VRE canceled the train I take home in the evening without giving us passengers an advance warning during the morning. I either faced the option of waiting another hour for the next train or getting back on the Metro system, paying higher fares and asking my wife to come get me at the last stop on the Orange Line. So VRE cost me money to ride a public transportation system I hate, and inconvenienced my wife, our kids and me. That’s no way to win the loyalty of customers. I’ll keep taking VRE because it’s still my best commuting option, but I won’t be singing the agency’s praises in my tweets or on Facebook any more. Filed under: D.C. Commuter Diary and Travel Comments: 2 Comments |
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Posted on 06.28.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 9:35 pm
Higher rates of up to 18 percent took effect over the weekend for commuters, tourists and others using the public rail system in the nation’s capital. For me that means 20 cents more per ride for three measly stops. That may seem like chump change, but it adds up quickly — 40 cents a day, $2 a week, $8-plus a month and almost $100 a year. Worse than the rate hikes, though, are the simultaneous, perpetual declines in commuting quality. The Metro system has a hard-earned reputation for shoddy service that plummets in reverse proportion to fare increases. Trains are forced out of service at the height of rush hour; escalators are taken out of service for months; operators don’t give passengers time to board before closing the doors; and cars feel like saunas because of broken air-conditioning. I’ve experienced all of these problems in the few weeks since Metro finalized the latest fare increase — and remember, I only travel between three stops! I took the picture in this entry several days into June and posted it to Twitter to try to embarrass Metro into action on an escalator that already had been broken for weeks. Metro’s response: It changed the date on the sign to say July, and still no workers have begun work on the project. Unfortunately, we riders are at the mercy of Metro officials who realize most of us have no better option than public transportation if we want to get into the city cheaply and relatively quickly. For years I’ve been saying that the day it becomes cheaper to drive into the city is the day I stop taking Metro (and now Virginia Railway Express). But with higher gas and parking prices, that day never comes. Filed under: D.C. Commuter Diary and News & Politics and Travel Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 06.23.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:38 pm
I’m stuck on the train bridge halfway across the Potomac because of a disabled VRE train ahead of us a few miles. We’re going to have to stop and pick up those stranded passengers. It’s going to be a long commute home — but at least I have a seat on an air-conditioned train. And hassles like this have been far rarer on VRE in my limited experience this year than in D.C.-area traffic over my previous 19 years of commuting by car and Metro. Filed under: Human Interest and Travel Comments: None |
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Posted on 02.08.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 4:43 pm
I drive a Toyota, and I must admit that my first instinct as a father was to call my local dealer and ask whether my car is safe to drive. But my second instinct was to remember that LaHood is a bureaucrat who needs to justify his existence, and what better way to do that than a little fear-mongering. So today I did the opposite of what LaHood recommended. I took my recalled Corolla for a long drive on post-blizzard roads and into West Virginia. My son and I survived. The lesson for Americans: Ignore bureaucratic fear-mongers like LaHood. Their attempts to scare you are shameful power trips. Thankfully, LaHood had the character to revise and extend his remarks after a foolish statement at a congressional hearing. But the unnecessary damage to Toyota’s reputation already had been done — and I say that as a customer who isn’t too happy with Toyota right now. Filed under: Business and Government and News & Politics and People and Travel Comments: 4 Comments |
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Posted on 10.31.09 by K. Daniel Glover @ 10:15 am
What a great name for a redneck restaurant! I’m going to have to find a good reason to drive West Virginia Route 2 between Point Pleasant and Huntington just so I can visit.
Let me revise that statement: Visiting Hillbilly Hot Dogs is all the reason I need for the trip. Go to the blog of Charleston, W.Va.-based photographer Rick Lee for the rest of the photos, inside and outside the beautiful dive. (Hat tip to Don Surber) Filed under: Business and Food and Human Interest and People and Photography and Rednecks and Travel and West Virginia Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.09.09 by K. Daniel Glover @ 1:14 am
If you want to know why I love West Virginia so, watch this video and wonder no more. It just doesn’t get any better than the Mountain State. I don’t know whether I should thank Don Surber or not for sending me the link because he sent it with this note: “Watch This. Get homesick.” It worked. I’m in desperate need of another week at Camp Appalachia. Filed under: Travel and Video and West Virginia Comments: None |
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Posted on 04.22.09 by K. Daniel Glover @ 11:34 pm
Inspired by a Facebook friend who used a redneck application I didn’t know existed, I just completed a form to learn that my “redneck name” is Cooter Jackson.
He lived in Hollywood, served in Congress and later became a mainstay, along with The General Lee, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. We used to love driving out to Sperryville just to see Cooter chatting it up with the rednecks who flocked to Cooter’s Place. These days you have to travel to Tennessee to relive the Cooter experience. Filed under: Entertainment and Family and Human Interest and Just For Laughs and People and Travel Comments: None |
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Posted on 04.11.09 by K. Daniel Glover @ 5:12 pm
One of our dearest friends is from Pensacola, Fla., and her parents still live there. My wife also lived in that region briefly as a child, so we decided to vacation there a few years ago. I either forgot or I never knew that Pensacola has a reputation as being the “Redneck Riviera.” I do know we had a blast while we were there, though, so the reputation makes sense. My fondest memory is of gorging on catfish and more at The Cock of the Walk. That was some good redneck chow. We also caught glimpses of the Blue Angels performing while we were there, though we decided to avoid the traffic craziness of going to the beach to watch the show. The city’s tourism chief seems more impressed with Pensacola’s “highbrow attractions” like the opera, ballet, theater, symphony and art museum, and it’s nice to have those opportunities for enlightenment for the rednecks who want them. But I hate to hear this attitude: “I don’t have a fit when I hear [Redneck Riviera]. But it’s not a term we’re going to use to market our area. Pensacola is so beyond that now.” Beyond that? If you’re beyond it, you need to get back to it. Embrace your inner redneckedness! Filed under: Culture and Food and Rednecks and Travel Comments: None |
