Trip Day1: Richmond to DC

somehow i feel like everytime i take the train i have an interesting experience, and trip day1 did not disappoint. as i waited in the staples mill station for the not-so-unusually late train i ran into an old friend. ami and i used to hang out a lot freshman year of college. after that she transferred to UVA and i didn't see quite as much of her anymore. after graduation she joined the peace corps, and she just got back from namibia in march. needless to say we had a lot to talk about and catch up on. and then, right before boarding, i ran into zainab (sp?). so the three of us sat together and had these great conversations ranging from themed parties to genocide (actually, those two topics were oddly tied in together...).

in a stroke of pure brilliance ami and i missed our stop (franconia-springfield). we couldn't hear the announcer at all (i think one of the speakers in our coach was broken or something), so when we saw the train was stopping at our station we grabbed our bags and ran for the door. unfortunately we had to cross two coaches to get to the only open door and by the time we got there they had shut the doors and were about to move on. so we got out at the next stop (alexandria), and went our separate ways. ami took the metro out to her brother's place in ballston, and i was got picked up from the alexandria station.

unfortunately my friend who was picking me up took over an hour to get there from tysons. not because there was traffic, or something legitimate like that, simply because apparently this friend of mine is a combination of unreliable and incompetant. after a brief trip to safeway for some trip supplies i reached laura's at 10:30PM. the annoying thing about public transportation in this country is that a trip that would have taken me about 2hrs by car ended up taking me nearly 5.5hrs. technically, though, i guess its only half amtrak's fault.

oh and for those of you who are wondering, the alexandria train station apparently closes by 9PM. and if you happen to be left waiting outside for someone to pick you up, there aren't any benches. i did get to take a picture or two during that time before my camera battery died.


The view from the front of the alexandria train station. (dont judge...it was low light without image stabilization).