Usually I drive to the Franconia-Springfield Metro station every morning to take the blue line into work. It's a very pleasant ride up to the King Street stop, about 12 minutes or so. This week I am house sitting for some friends who live off of Franconia road up in Alexandria-ish area. I was all excited because I could try something new and take the YELLOW line train into work, which I never get on. The plan was to ride the yellow line from Huntington to King Street. This was something I was greatly looking forward to - experiencing a whole new station stop, a whole new set of commuters, different drivers announcing different station stops, etc. It would be out of my normal routine, and it would expose me to the things yellow line passengers experience on the Metro.
With my Google map in hand, I left their house around the normal 8:03am time I would leave my house, expecting to get to work nice and early this morning. On their website, Metro indicated that it only took like 3 or 5 minutes to get to King Street from the Huntington stop. Nice, I thought to myself.
Major traffic on Telegraph road. Of course. Duh! I'm so used to my pleasant jaunt up the Parkway to the Metro station. Sure there are lots of cars on the road then, but none of this we're sitting still for 15 minutes babbish. I had to get re-acquainted with this. Argh, I thought to myself.
As I'm sitting in traffic, I'm hoping that I am in the correct lane I need to be in to turn right on Huntington Ave. I get all anxious about these sorts of things. We were literally all just sitting there. I didn't know if I needed to get over or not. Once we started moving again, I resolved that I would just go with the flow of traffic and hopefully find my way there.
I totally missed the turn for Huntington Ave. Wasn't in the most right-handed lane. Thankfully, I noticed the Masonic temple. Really close. Then I realized that, DUH, I'm right next to Alexandria and practically at work already. It just so happened that I successfully continued on Telegraph until I got to a part of the street I recognized, and merged over to head towards Old Town. Got on Duke Street and knew where I was going. Another thing to be thankful for was the fact I had cash on me to pay for parking in a parking garage as well.
It didn't hit me until I was sitting there on Telegraph and saw the Masonic Temple that it would have been ridiculous for me to go to the Huntington Metro, park, take the Metro, and then walk to work. I just didn't realize how close I already was. This is a good thing, but I am really bummed that I will not be experiencing the yellow line this week. Oh well... maybe some other time?
The other slightly disappointing thing was that I discovered that the VRE does not run on the weekends. There goes my grand idea of taking it up to DC one day with my sisters. One weekend, I should say. Because I WORK during the day!
Waiting for my Metro t-shirt and mug to arrive in the mail. Obessed? Yes.
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