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Home Again
Feb. 19th, 2006 09:52 pmI had a 5 PM Horizon Air flight from PDX to OAK this afternoon, rather than the later Alaska flight I've been usually taking from weekends in Oregon. Presumably because tomorrow is a holiday, the Horizon flight was not completely sold out for a change -- usually that Sunday evening job is completely full -- and I had the two seats in the last row to myself.
We were on time, my luggage rolled off the belt in a reasonable amount of time, the AirBART shuttle ran without incident, and the Capitol train was on time and got me home on time. Nice having everything work as planned.
When I got off the train in Fremont, I stood there to watch the train pull out. As is unfortunately all too common, one of the doors -- the one through which I'd exited -- wouldn't close. I trotted over and pulled on the stuck door, but it was badly stuck. Moreover, the train was starting to pull out of the station, and staying too close to a moving train is dangerous, so I backed off. I heard the engineer on the radio telling the conductor that a door hadn't closed, and as the train picked up speed, I saw the conductor heading back to try and get the door closed. From the radio chatter, they had quite a bit of trouble with it before finally forcing the door shut and locking it that way.
The Amtrak ticket is more expensive than a BART fare from Fremont to Coliseum, but I would have had to take a taxi home from the BART station because (a) I would have come back after the last bus of the night and (b) because I would have had to park for more than 24 hours on a weekday, I couldn't park in the BART lot. Factoring this into account, the Capitol ticket is a better deal. Besides, I get 300 Alaska air miles for the train ticket.
We were on time, my luggage rolled off the belt in a reasonable amount of time, the AirBART shuttle ran without incident, and the Capitol train was on time and got me home on time. Nice having everything work as planned.
When I got off the train in Fremont, I stood there to watch the train pull out. As is unfortunately all too common, one of the doors -- the one through which I'd exited -- wouldn't close. I trotted over and pulled on the stuck door, but it was badly stuck. Moreover, the train was starting to pull out of the station, and staying too close to a moving train is dangerous, so I backed off. I heard the engineer on the radio telling the conductor that a door hadn't closed, and as the train picked up speed, I saw the conductor heading back to try and get the door closed. From the radio chatter, they had quite a bit of trouble with it before finally forcing the door shut and locking it that way.
The Amtrak ticket is more expensive than a BART fare from Fremont to Coliseum, but I would have had to take a taxi home from the BART station because (a) I would have come back after the last bus of the night and (b) because I would have had to park for more than 24 hours on a weekday, I couldn't park in the BART lot. Factoring this into account, the Capitol ticket is a better deal. Besides, I get 300 Alaska air miles for the train ticket.
