I spent most of the week in Washington. The D.C. version.
We stayed at the Bethesda Hyatt. The room was OK. In fact it was a palace compared to what Captain Bob and I are used to on our bike trips. But when you get over $300 / day I would think you would have an exhaust fan in the bathroom. Maybe even a wide-screen TV?
The hotel was about 9 miles from where I was going every day. So the Metro was the only choice. Fortunately the start was right under the hotel. Good thing as Nicole hit the mid-Atlantic this week.
I have never been on the Metro and I think the last time I was on a NY subway was in the early 80s so I'm a wide-eyed newbie. When you look at the Metro Map you can get the heebie-jeebies trying to figure out how to navigate the thing. But it turned out to be easy. All I had to do was hop on the Red Line, transfer to the Blue or Orange Line at Metro Central, travel a few more stops and I was there.
Now I did need to walk outside the hotel. But it was to an area with a cover so no rain on me. An elevator brought us down about one level. About 50 feet to right was an escalator. The longest, steepest escalator I've ever seen. I'd swear this thing must be 1/4 mile long. At the bottom there are a row of machines vending tickets. For my $20 I got a small square piece to heavy stock paper with a magnetic strip down the middle.
So I put the ticket in the slot and it pops out a few feet away. I took the trains to my destination and fed the ticket through the turnstile slot again. When it popped out this time, a new balance was printed.
Come near the end of the week I was running low on money. Just popped the ticket in, fed a couple bucks in, adjusted the total to what I knew I needed, pushed the button and out popped a new ticket and my change.
Now I'm no Luddite but I think the sophistication is pretty marvelous. Yeah I guess if I jumped from an early 80s PC to today's PC maybe I'd find that marvelous too. I have since been told that the Metro is cleaner and such than the NY subways but they have synthesized voices announcing stations and the like that you can actually hear and understand. The Metro is still a human over a loudspeaker that you can't understand.
