Riding the Tide

The Tide in all its glory

Last Saturday Jeff and I had a totally frivolous day. Hampton Roads recently spent $338 million dollars on a brand new light rail, a commuter train to help alleviate some of the crazy car traffic. It came under a lot of flak because it was two years overdue and cost about double what it was originally supposed to, but now that it's up and running, the ridership is already twice what was projected. I love trains, I love mass-transit...it's so convenient not having to worry about parking your car, being able to read or eat or put on makeup or tweeze your eyebrows while you're driving. Yeah, sure, there's never a bus coming for twenty minutes and then there's three, but overall, I'm very pro mass transit. Right now the Tide, as the train in Norfolk is lovingly called, only has about ten miles of track, but there's already talk about extending it down to Virginia Beach...I hope they do. As nice as it is not to have to pay for parking in downtown Norfolk, it would be REALLY nice not to have to park a car in Virginia Beach.

So, I wanted to support the Tide. First, we had to drive for an hour. Then we parked (for free), bought our tickets from a machine (Jeff, who's a bit of a coin collector, was geeked out that the change came in dollar coins), and settled in for the ride. The Tide is brand spankin' new, shiny and clean. Cleaner even than the Waterloo line in London. The train is really only fifty feet long, with a bend in the middle to get around the curves...baby trains that remind one of caterpillars.

First we meandered through Norfolk suburbs, before sailing high over Norfolk State University. Then we gradually landed in downtown Norfolk itself, and disembarked near MacArthur Center. The Tide is small enough that it has to obey traffic signals and it even has an electronic trolley bell to warn pedestrians its near. Our tickets were also good for the ferry that goes across the Elizabeth River to Portsmouth, so we headed across for dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, the Biergarten. As the name suggests, it is a German restaurant, and yes, there is bier. 306 varieties at last check. Although we've had good meals there before, this time was a bit of a letdown. Too many kids in one warm room plus disappointing schwarzewälder kirschtorte made for a long meal. Still, bier. Also! I finally got to see inside a store called Skipjacks, which is nautical themed, with lots of antiques. If had several thousand dollars and several living rooms to decorate, I could have spent DAYS in that store. And they have a dog named Jack...I didn't ask, but I suspect that he may have been named after Jack Aubrey.


Here's a map in case you're getting confused. Click on it to make it bigger...we got on at Newtown Road and off at MacArthur Center. Not shown: the Bier Garten and Skipjacks, which is south of the Elizabeth River. It's important to be specific, because normally when you say "south of the river" you mean the James, which is where we live. There are a lot of rivers in Hampton Roads, hence the name "roads."

The weather was absolutely wonderful, warm and sunny, even when we were on the ferry, which is an adorable fake paddlewheel. Honestly, I would live in Portsmouth and work in Norfolk just so I could commute on the ferry every day. The best part about riding the Tide was not reliving the happy rides of time past, but of watching people who had never been on a train before enjoy it. You could see parents relaxing as they watched their kids frolic on the turntable bed in the train's floor...ladies of a certain age wearing hats, headed down to MacArthur Center for some shopping...a Navy guy in an Admiral's uniform (hockey, not dress blues) headed to a game. More than anything, this made me cheerful and happy too. I hope that everyone who was riding--especially people who ride every day--will see how great trains, buses and even ferries can be and then maybe we can saturate this country will mass-transit, like it is in Europe.

I'm definitely enjoying this whole not working in the evening thing...so far this week I've cooked dinner twice and reveled in dishes duty. Ah, domesticity! How I have missed thee.

Honestly

This is where the pretty pictures of a lovely Christmas at home are supposed to go, then a joke about how hard it is to update my blog when I'm typing on my new iPad (thank you so much, mom and dad!) and there's a beagle on my foot, but it's been a long couple of weeks. No, screw that, it's been a long couple of months.

Starting in August, I began working at the Busch Gardens costume shop, a local theme park. The job is more fun and less stressful than CW but those extra hours, combined with going home in September, continuing ghost storytelling tours and managing a Christmas program in December meant that I haven't worked less than 60 hours a week since then. The two weeks around Thanksgiving I worked so much that I doubled my paycheck from CW. The three remaining work days of the week afterwe got home from our Wisconsin Christmas I got six hours of sleep each night because I had to work at night.

Why am I saying these things? So all my loyal readers will understand exactly what I've been up against these past months and why I've neglected my blog. I know I'm supposed to feel grateful to have a job, much less three or four, depending on how you look at it, but I just can't do it any more. I twisted my shoulder in my sleep last month, and I'm convinced that overexertion due to my job contributed to it. I've gained 30 pounds in the past two years, but with limited time to eat right and exercise, my knees are starting to creak ominously. It's not that I am being whiny and saying I can't keep up this pace--clearly I can--but that I just can't physically or mentally do this anymore.

What the alternative is, I don't know. It seems like a good time to consider and calculate, since I have no evening jobs during the month of January. It's a new year, time to make a new start. I'd like to leave the dishes pile up because I'm busy writing, not because I'm working. I'd like to go see some movies, not just watch the trailers and miss the feature. And I really want to sit quietly by the window and read, with no other claims on my time. I've already made plans to go to Harry Potter world at Universal later this month...yay, a real vacation! Yet, I'm already living in dread of March, when hay making time comes again. I need to plan now to avoid that madness.

I hope everyone who reads this is happy and healthy and doing exactly what their hearts desire. I love you all and think about you all constantly, even if I don't call you and tell you enough. You are all so important to me...2012 is going to be good!