Day 1: My first adventure

A few weeks ago I got a new job in a completely different part of Dallas. Now I assume you've been to Dallas if you're reading this, but in case you haven't...the city is huge, and traffic sucks. Really sucks. I went from driving 22 miles in about 40 minutes, to about 13 miles in at least an hour every day. That's one way. As much as I love to drive and listen to our best radio station (1310 The Ticket), I don't want to spend 2 hours of every day riding someone else's bumper.

Conveniently the new gig is located right across the street from a DART rail station. For those not familiar, the DART (DALLAS AREA RAPID TRANSIT) is the city's way to alleviate congestion. It includes city buses, and the relatively new light rail system. I would probably rather have lobsters covered in tarantulas thrown at me than ride the buses, so I never thought about using DART before. That and I don't have hobo stab insurance. However, since I work and live really close to the rail system, I really had to think about my options.

DRIVING:

Pros: No hobos with knives, the Ticket
Cons: 2+ hours every day, $200+ in gas every month.

DART RAIL:

Pros: $50 for a month pass, 40 minutes round trip
Cons: Crackheads, smelly people, hub for multiple airborne illnesses (insert swine flu joke here), will probably be blown up by terrorists one day

Somehow the idea of getting swine flu, being accosted by crackheads, and sitting next to smelly people totally beat waiting in traffic every day. I really do hate traffic though. So I decided to go for it.

As I understand it, if you travel earlier in the morning, you are 8 million times more likely to ride with normal people. Business men and women off to do important things downtown. However, if you hop on the DART at 8:35 like I do every day, this couldn't be further from the truth...

Now not everyone that rides the DART is totally weird or a cave creature, some are just slightly peculiar. For instance, the old Chinese man who smelled of moth balls sitting next to me reading the Bible in Chinese did not strike me as odd. His decision to smell like a closet in the little house on the prairie was a little odd though. The two Hispanic women who boarded from opposite sides of the car were not strange either, though I did not understand their choice to block both exits of the train with their collective 12 children (I'm not even kidding. way to feed the stereotype ladies).

The goth/punk/trendy/can't make up their minds as to what genre they are other than "stupid looking" kids behind me missed their exit, though I think the leader of the group did it on purpose just for attention. "OMG I missed the exit. That is soo crazy I can't believe I did that. Can you believe I did that? That is such a ME thing to do!" Barf. I wish they had gotten off just so I didn't hear their high pitched squeals through my headphones till the next stop. I don't quite understand the people who try and even successfully sleep with their heads against the glass of the train car. The ride is only a few steps above riding the Texas Giant roller coaster as far as comfortableness. I'm glad I decided to not try and stand up and not hold onto anything like Mr Coolguy McCoolerstein, because if I had some guy sitting down like me would have giggled when McCoolerstein inevitably lost his balance after a whopping 7 seconds.

The ride home was considerably more normal, but considerably smellier. Nothing like cramming 40 people who've been working all day into a train car in 95+ degree heat. Can't wait for the next adventure.