clickity clack down the track

Today I sat on the subway and typewritered short messages to friends. i would rip it off the typewriter and pass it down to them. it was like texting. With a reciept.

Strangely enough, i was not even the strangest person in the subway car. across the aisle, a man holding a clipboard was doing somersaults in his seat. awesome.

Getting to Know DC

I've never spent time in WashDC as an adult, so i figure 2-12 months of orientation and training makes a darn good excuse to explore the city.

Needless to say, it's only gotten better since night one: a Valentine's evening spent wandering Foggy Bottom in a desperate hunt for food. I had to settle on a messy gyro in a cramped basement cafe.

Early favorites? U-Street is a fantastic zone of hipness. Adams-Morgan is like a big long Brady Street. Russia House is delightfully familiar. Chinatown is a fun faux-urban area. Eastern Market's got a great vibe to it. La Tasca's tapas are worth tasting two days in a row. The best view in town is from atop the Kennedy Center.

If you'll humor me, though, I do have the littlest of pet peeves: multi-name metro stops. Yowsers, it makes it hard for visitors when metro stops have a ridiculous number of names. Just one example? U St/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo. WTF. Let's do it, DC, let's just settle on one name per stop. I suppose, of course, it's all politics. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, the glamour and name recognition that comes with a spot on the subway map.

The bad news? The trend is getting worse. Three metro lines were built in the 1970s. 7% of Blue Line stops have two or three hyphenated or slashed names. The Orange and Red Lines stand at 29% and 30%, respectively.

That's bad, but both of the lines built more recently have even more hypens and dashes! The Yellow Line opened in 1983 with 35% double or triple nameage. Even worse, the Green Line opened in 1991 with a full 40% uber-verbiage.

Makes me wonder if there's any hope at all for understanding the Silver Line when it opens toward Dulles in 2013...

ENTP

I've never actually gotten around to taking the Myers-Briggs before...

According to 90-odd questions answered, I'm inclined toward:

Extroversion
iNtuition
Thinking
Perceiving

Only 3.2% of the U.S. population's an ENTP, but it was the most common category in our orientation group. We're likely to be labeled an "inventor." MBTI describes our "type" as creative, imaginative, clever, enterprising, resourceful; theoretical, conceptual and curious; good at seeing opportunities and possibilities in the outer world; adept at generating possibilities and then analyzing them strategically; stimulated by difficulties; quickly devise creative responses and trust ability to improvise; likely to value competence, intelligence, precision and efficiency; usually seen by others as independent, outspoken, enthusiastic, assertive and outspoken.

Boom, now you know how to deal with me.

Portability

FYI - AirTran allows manual typewriters as personal items. Expect, though, cat-calls from security staff, especially re: the availability of ribbons.

The Eagle Summit Tribute: What Will Fit In The Rust Holes?

The Eagle Summit's final photo shoot

I figured the best way to demonstrate the impressive dimensions of the Eagle Summit's rust holes de jour would be to showcase a variety of objects, some that were small enough to fit into the rust holes and some that were too big to fit in.

Unfortunately, every single object was able to fit into the rust holes...

An entire fleet of pirate legos and cannon? Check.


A Trevor Hoffman bobblehead doll? Check.


And a 16 ounce - biiiiig - Miller Lite can commemorating Super Bowl XXXI? Check.

The Eagle Summit Tribute: Memories

Eagle Summit Casette-Based Theme Song:

(tie) Here I Go Again - Whitesnake

(tie) Back in the High Life Again - Steve Winwood

Most Valuable Passenger:

N.J. Ruys most likely logged the most passenger miles in the beaut. One trip to Colorado, 2.5 years of roommatesmanship during the Eagle Summit years? That kind of longevity is tough to beat.

Last Passenger:

R.M. Jones. Fitting.

Most Bittersweet Taxi-Runs:

(tie) N.V. Csabay and ORD.

(tie) M.L. Madden and MSN.

Worst Commute:

2004-05. 5:30 to morning teacher basketball league.

Top Five Eagle Summit Moments:

Spring 2004 Beach Party Shuttle with D.S. Lund.

Driving to/through/from North Carolina with a faded yellow mattress in the backseat, and Brian/Emmaline/Aaryn/et al riding shotgun.

Barreling through the 100-Year Floods in Fond du Lac on June 12th, 2008.

Driving my worldly possessions from Madison to Fond du Lac, one last time, in the summer of 2009...with my right-hand turn signal going off the whole damn way.

Sleeping inside the Eagle Summit, bathing in Lake Mendota and brushing my teeth in the public library - Fall 2009.

Trips Where the Eagle Summit was Vetoed as a Mode of Transportation:

Outer Banks 2004
Alabama 2004
Iowa 2006
Virginia 2007
Arkansas 2009
Colorado 2009
Virginia 2009
Lakewood 2009
Minnesota 2009
Washington DC 2010

The Eagle Summit Tribute: Crunching the Numbers

I bought my first car, a 1995 Eagle Summit, on Nov. 10th, 2003, for $1,800. Soon - this weekend, to be exact - that sweet, sweet ride will come to an end. Here’s a numeric breakdown of the Eagle Summit’s goodness:

2,287 days of ownership. (Although that mark is punctuated by two long stays in Hungary totaling just more than 365 days.)

And over the course of those more than six years? 56,569 miles driven. To put that income-esque figure into perspective, 56,569 miles is equal to:

= 350 round-trips between home and Madison’s capital square.
= 18 one-way drives across the breadth of America on U.S. Route 50.
= more than 2 trips around the world at the equator.
= more than 1/4th of the way to the moon.

(Do NOT doubt the Eagle Summit, yo!)

Doing some math, that’s 24.7 miles per day. The equivalent is one round-trip drive to the St. Vinnie’s on Fond du Lac’s southwest side each and every day. It also equals just about one mile per hour of ownership. Surprising.

At a purchase price of $1,800, minus the sales price of $1, I paid $1,799 for my 2,287 days of membership in the Eagle Summit club. The breakdown? 78 cents a day. 3 cents a mile.

Where’d the Eagle Summit go? 13 States. Not the original colonies, but WI + CO, IA, IL, IN, KY, MN, NC, NE, SD, TN, VA, WY.

And the null set? Zero is the number of Eagle Summit-related:
Accidents.
Speeding tickets.
Roadhead.
Border crossings.
Hitchhikers.
Animals hit.
CDs played.
Cigarettes lit.