Monday, June 28, 2010

Sick. Transit. Gloria! (Copa) Mundial.

No, not Sic transit gloria mundi ("Thus passes the glory of the world"), but the much more mundane: I'm sick with a cold. K had a great experience with transit. Alas, very little of that experience was in Oakland.

I was planning to volunteer at Oaklavia on Sunday, but that didn't happen because I was having a hard time sitting, never mind walking or biking about the streets of Uptown and Downtown. By all accounts (In Oakland, Oaklander Online, Oakland North, SFGate) it was a huge success -- great weather, lots of people having fun. I'm sorry I couldn't volunteer or even participate.

About the only upside (besides the cats approving of my inactivity, though not so much of the sneezing and coughing) is that I've been able to watch more World Cup matches. We don't have cable, so thank goodness for the Univision coverage. I like their announcers better in general anyways, even if I can't understand everything they say.

Yesterday K headed up to Seattle for a few days on business. I dropped her off at Rockridge BART and she headed over to SFO for her flight. She's staying in the Fremont district of Seattle, north of downtown and west of Lake Union. In a great example of how transit should work, she took light rail from SeaTac to downtown, then hopped on a bus that let her off a few blocks from her destination. Total cost less than $5, elapsed time door-to-door of 1 hour, 15 minutes. A cab would have cost $55. Driving time (i.e., not including walking to the cab stand, or walking to the parking garage and driving out nor including parking at the destination) is about 30 minutes (longer during commute times). And no slower than spit $5 people-movers just to get to the light rail.

The 'gloria!' is the beautiful summer weather we've settled into here in Oakland, last week's all-too-brief visit to Monterey to celebrate our 10th anniversary, and the fact I'm finally starting to get over this $%&#! cold.

2 comments:

ArtSparker said...

Sorry you have been ill, heh, I frequently think that about cats when they see people lying around, that the cats think the humans are behaving sensibly for once.

Unknown said...

K and I have a theory (which after meeting thousands of cats around the world has yet to be disproven): all cats are weird, just in different ways.

But they probably think the same thing about us, e.g., why are my people so fascinated with my poop? Why do they think things like bananas, oranges and mint are edible?

In any event, since K has been out of town, there's been contention for which cat gets to take advantage of my lap.