wayman
Engineer
About a week before inauguration, my transit-geek friend Noda posted on his blog the best directions by car from Philadelphia to Washington for inauguration to avoid traffic--going halfway down into Delaware and then across a bay bridge to enter Washington from the south-east, the direction nobody comes from. At the end, he had the line "Happy driving! Next time, remember to book your train tickets farther in advance!"
I had been on the fence about traveling to inauguration, partly because I'd just done so much traveling in the past month (moving from Lynchburg to Philadelphia, then down-and-back to Lynchburg for Christmas) and partly because I hadn't made arrangements for where to stay in Washington yet. Obviously, I should have bought train tickets early with the knowledge I could easily cancel at the last minute, but I didn't. And naturally, I took my friend's comment as a challenge to see if I could still buy cheap Amtrak tickets
Indeed, I could! Not on Tuesday itself, of course, but a longer visit was fine by me since it would afford me the chance to visit some friends while I was in town. I booked PHL-WAS for Sunday morning and WAS-PHL for Thursday morning, each trip at the $66 fare (reduced to $60 with AAA). Moments later, I realized that actually was a better deal than getting the $44 fare because of the AGR "Buy 2, Get 1" deal on Regionals which requires a $50 minimum fare per "Buy" segment! I've now done half of the "Buy 2, Get 1", and I'll gladly take a second trip to DC sometime next month to get a free trip to Boston sometime this summer
I actually had a standing offer since Election Day to stay with my friend Irina, the same friend who hosted me for the Virginia Primaries back in February; I checked with her, and that offer still stood. The one downside is that she lives out in West Falls Church; granted, her condo is only a ten minute drive to the Orange Line, but it's totally unwalkable highway driving and I'd be without a car and thus beholden to her for trips to METRO. But she was hosting a small party on Tuesday to watch Inauguration on TV, and even if I wasn't going into DC proper it was a nice "full circle" to see inauguration in the same place I stayed when I first started working for the campaign.
My first of two mistakes in buying these Amtrak tickets was not having realized the SEPTA R3 first train on Sunday morning would get me to 30th St around 8:40 AM, and my Amtrak was at 7:10 AM. I could have caught a bus or a trolley (both running by 5:00 AM) to 69th St, and then the MFL el/subway to 30th (also running by 5:00 AM), but thankfully--given the temperature and the snow!--my housemate Josh offered to drive me to 69th St at 5:00 AM Sunday morning
I brought along two of my unused AGR Select Club Acela Day Passes, and used one at 30th St, granting me free coffee and muffins.
On the platform about five minutes before the train pulled in, I was tapped on the shoulder by one of my friends from the campaign! Now, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Everyone on the train was wearing an Obama button or sweatshirt, and I probably knew 10% of the Philadelphia volunteer corps from my work on staff. But this campaign friend, Demani, lived in Palo Alto, California and had flown out to join us for the PA primary back in March!!! (And he later flew up to Portland, Oregon for their primary, and I met him again while I was a staffer out there!) He'd flown into PHL (airport) that weekend for inauguration, as apparently did a lot of people because flights were easier to come by than flights into Dulles or National.
The ride down on the "Obama Train" was a lot of fun, but generally uneventful, except perhaps to note that lots of passengers were talking with their seatmates and aislemates sincce everyone obviously had a lot in common to talk about--where are you coming from, what volunteering did you do, what was your state's primary like, where did you get that shirt, are you going to any balls, etc.
A brief non-Amtrak discussion of METRO: On Monday evening, I decided it was worth going into DC on Tuesday to watch Inauguration on the Mall. Irina agreed to drive me to West Falls Church METRO station at Very Early O'Clock (!!!), which got me to WFC at 4:30 AM. METRO started at 4:00 that day. I got on the first Orange Line train that stopped there, and with heavy METRO traffic it took an hour to get to L'Enfant Plaza (normally about a half hour ride). I met up with a friend from high school, Chad, just after the speech (yes, we found each other in a crowd of 1 million-plus people), and we walked east past a four-block long line to get into L'Enfant, further east past another four-block-long line to get into Capitol South, and eventually (having walked east a couple miles above ground) to Eastern Market station, well east of the "Inauguration zone", where the line to the escalator was only thirty feet long and moved very quickly. We got on the first westbound Orange Line train we saw and even got seats; obviously, it filled to capacity at the next station west (Capitol South). Chad got off in L'Enfant to transfer, and I had a one-seat ride back to WFC, where Irina picked me up at about 5:30 PM. Yes, I got in and out of the District and had decent position on the Mall for Inauguration, all in a 14-hour "surgical strike" I caught a news report at 10:00 AM that METRO had 318,000 passengers by 9:00 AM. I later heard they'd had 545,000 by noon. That's not counting those same folks leaving the city that evening, which may well double those figures. Wow.
Wednesday, I visited two friends in DC, Chris who lives there and Gwen who was also visiting from Philadelphia for inauguration. We had lunch in Capitol City Brewing, just across the street, and then visited the Smithsonian's National Post Office Museum (same building, just across the street from WAS). We got to tour an old RPO car, but far more interesting were the bizarre mail sleds, sleighs, and half-tracks on display! Also amusing was the slogan for the postal inspectors (the branch who investigate mail fraud and such): "The Post Office delivers the mail; Postal Inspectors deliver justice!" :lol: WAS was still decorated for the Eastern Ball, one of the ten official balls the Obamas visited Tuesday night. Gwen had an 8:45 PM regional back to PHL that night, and I took her up to catch it after we had dinner in the Food Court. WAS was functioning completely normally by that point.
Thursday morning was my second mistake in having reserved my Amtrak tickets: To get to a 6:35 AM train from West Falls Church, I had to catch an Orange Line train (for a one-transfer ride) around 5:15 AM to be safe. Fortunately, Irina goes to work early, so it wasn't too much of an imposition on her to drop me off at WFC at that hour. My ride in was uneventful, and I used a second Day Pass for the lounge, enjoying coffee, juice, and several different pastries, plus taking a Washington Post with all the inauguration news. The WAS lounge is 100 times nicer than the PHL one! The only problem was that they apparently don't announce Regionals from the lounge nor escort passengers to the platform, so I had to watch the clock and get myself to the train. Not a big deal, though.
The ride back was again uneventful, except for one very odd sighting. Near Wilmington I spotted three MBTA (ie, Boston area) commuter cars parked on a siding. How did they wind up there?!
At PHL, I had use of Club Acela because my Day Pass was good all day, anywhere on Amtrak After relaxing for a bit in a comfy chair, I made a haircut appointment, checked my bags for the day downstairs, and took the subway ten blocks for a 9:30 AM haircut, returning for my bags and another rest in the lounge until my R3 back to Lansdowne. A bizarre use of the lounge, I suppose, but it was very convenient and pleasant.
And that's that. Now I just have to plan February travel to Washington to visit other friends I didn't see this time, so I can get my "Get 1" Regional trip this summer Also, the convenience of the lounges on that trip gives me a lot of extra incentive to work for Select Plus this year!
I had been on the fence about traveling to inauguration, partly because I'd just done so much traveling in the past month (moving from Lynchburg to Philadelphia, then down-and-back to Lynchburg for Christmas) and partly because I hadn't made arrangements for where to stay in Washington yet. Obviously, I should have bought train tickets early with the knowledge I could easily cancel at the last minute, but I didn't. And naturally, I took my friend's comment as a challenge to see if I could still buy cheap Amtrak tickets
Indeed, I could! Not on Tuesday itself, of course, but a longer visit was fine by me since it would afford me the chance to visit some friends while I was in town. I booked PHL-WAS for Sunday morning and WAS-PHL for Thursday morning, each trip at the $66 fare (reduced to $60 with AAA). Moments later, I realized that actually was a better deal than getting the $44 fare because of the AGR "Buy 2, Get 1" deal on Regionals which requires a $50 minimum fare per "Buy" segment! I've now done half of the "Buy 2, Get 1", and I'll gladly take a second trip to DC sometime next month to get a free trip to Boston sometime this summer
I actually had a standing offer since Election Day to stay with my friend Irina, the same friend who hosted me for the Virginia Primaries back in February; I checked with her, and that offer still stood. The one downside is that she lives out in West Falls Church; granted, her condo is only a ten minute drive to the Orange Line, but it's totally unwalkable highway driving and I'd be without a car and thus beholden to her for trips to METRO. But she was hosting a small party on Tuesday to watch Inauguration on TV, and even if I wasn't going into DC proper it was a nice "full circle" to see inauguration in the same place I stayed when I first started working for the campaign.
My first of two mistakes in buying these Amtrak tickets was not having realized the SEPTA R3 first train on Sunday morning would get me to 30th St around 8:40 AM, and my Amtrak was at 7:10 AM. I could have caught a bus or a trolley (both running by 5:00 AM) to 69th St, and then the MFL el/subway to 30th (also running by 5:00 AM), but thankfully--given the temperature and the snow!--my housemate Josh offered to drive me to 69th St at 5:00 AM Sunday morning
I brought along two of my unused AGR Select Club Acela Day Passes, and used one at 30th St, granting me free coffee and muffins.
On the platform about five minutes before the train pulled in, I was tapped on the shoulder by one of my friends from the campaign! Now, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Everyone on the train was wearing an Obama button or sweatshirt, and I probably knew 10% of the Philadelphia volunteer corps from my work on staff. But this campaign friend, Demani, lived in Palo Alto, California and had flown out to join us for the PA primary back in March!!! (And he later flew up to Portland, Oregon for their primary, and I met him again while I was a staffer out there!) He'd flown into PHL (airport) that weekend for inauguration, as apparently did a lot of people because flights were easier to come by than flights into Dulles or National.
The ride down on the "Obama Train" was a lot of fun, but generally uneventful, except perhaps to note that lots of passengers were talking with their seatmates and aislemates sincce everyone obviously had a lot in common to talk about--where are you coming from, what volunteering did you do, what was your state's primary like, where did you get that shirt, are you going to any balls, etc.
A brief non-Amtrak discussion of METRO: On Monday evening, I decided it was worth going into DC on Tuesday to watch Inauguration on the Mall. Irina agreed to drive me to West Falls Church METRO station at Very Early O'Clock (!!!), which got me to WFC at 4:30 AM. METRO started at 4:00 that day. I got on the first Orange Line train that stopped there, and with heavy METRO traffic it took an hour to get to L'Enfant Plaza (normally about a half hour ride). I met up with a friend from high school, Chad, just after the speech (yes, we found each other in a crowd of 1 million-plus people), and we walked east past a four-block long line to get into L'Enfant, further east past another four-block-long line to get into Capitol South, and eventually (having walked east a couple miles above ground) to Eastern Market station, well east of the "Inauguration zone", where the line to the escalator was only thirty feet long and moved very quickly. We got on the first westbound Orange Line train we saw and even got seats; obviously, it filled to capacity at the next station west (Capitol South). Chad got off in L'Enfant to transfer, and I had a one-seat ride back to WFC, where Irina picked me up at about 5:30 PM. Yes, I got in and out of the District and had decent position on the Mall for Inauguration, all in a 14-hour "surgical strike"
I caught a news report at 10:00 AM that METRO had 318,000 passengers by 9:00 AM. I later heard they'd had 545,000 by noon. That's not counting those same folks leaving the city that evening, which may well double those figures. Wow.Wednesday, I visited two friends in DC, Chris who lives there and Gwen who was also visiting from Philadelphia for inauguration. We had lunch in Capitol City Brewing, just across the street, and then visited the Smithsonian's National Post Office Museum (same building, just across the street from WAS). We got to tour an old RPO car, but far more interesting were the bizarre mail sleds, sleighs, and half-tracks on display! Also amusing was the slogan for the postal inspectors (the branch who investigate mail fraud and such): "The Post Office delivers the mail; Postal Inspectors deliver justice!" :lol: WAS was still decorated for the Eastern Ball, one of the ten official balls the Obamas visited Tuesday night. Gwen had an 8:45 PM regional back to PHL that night, and I took her up to catch it after we had dinner in the Food Court. WAS was functioning completely normally by that point.
Thursday morning was my second mistake in having reserved my Amtrak tickets: To get to a 6:35 AM train from West Falls Church, I had to catch an Orange Line train (for a one-transfer ride) around 5:15 AM to be safe. Fortunately, Irina goes to work early, so it wasn't too much of an imposition on her to drop me off at WFC at that hour. My ride in was uneventful, and I used a second Day Pass for the lounge, enjoying coffee, juice, and several different pastries, plus taking a Washington Post with all the inauguration news. The WAS lounge is 100 times nicer than the PHL one! The only problem was that they apparently don't announce Regionals from the lounge nor escort passengers to the platform, so I had to watch the clock and get myself to the train. Not a big deal, though.
The ride back was again uneventful, except for one very odd sighting. Near Wilmington I spotted three MBTA (ie, Boston area) commuter cars parked on a siding. How did they wind up there?!
At PHL, I had use of Club Acela because my Day Pass was good all day, anywhere on Amtrak
After relaxing for a bit in a comfy chair, I made a haircut appointment, checked my bags for the day downstairs, and took the subway ten blocks for a 9:30 AM haircut, returning for my bags and another rest in the lounge until my R3 back to Lansdowne. A bizarre use of the lounge, I suppose, but it was very convenient and pleasant.And that's that. Now I just have to plan February travel to Washington to visit other friends I didn't see this time, so I can get my "Get 1" Regional trip this summer
Also, the convenience of the lounges on that trip gives me a lot of extra incentive to work for Select Plus this year!
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