Some Quick Hits on a Day on the Rails

We spent most of the day on a train trip to to San Diego and back and had a few interesting moments along the way. When we arrived at the Irvine station the new parking garage had a lot of cars in it, and the overflow lot had a bunch more. We found a spot but wondered why so many cars and so few people waiting to get on the train. We would find that answer later.

The train was pretty empty going south, not much of a delay, and arriving in San Diego we found a beautiful if unusually hot day for downtown San Diego. It's not that often the weather down there right on the water is in the 80's. Here's the old Union Station surrounded by the towering high rise condos going up all over the area:

On the way south we saw hundreds of bike riders heading the same way all the way from Orange County down to near San Diego. We would see all of them later that afternoon.

We did a lot of walking all over the downtown area, starting with a walk along the water down to Seaport Village, and then back to the station and a bunch of blocks north to 6th and Broadway, the site of the former San Diego headquarters of Bank of America. I started working in that building 30 years ago this November, and in this corner of the building I spent a lot of time working as a vault teller.

They've since added a couple of doors that weren't there in 1978-1980, and I'll never forget the guy who used to stand right outside my window holding up grotesque photos of abortions while screaming in the face of anyone who passed by. Every month he'd come in and cash his Social Security check and he was just as sane as anybody. He just had an inordinate passion on the abortion issue.

When we got back to the station to catch the 4pm train, the place was jammed with all those people who had been riding their bikes to San Diego all day. While talking with a couple of riders they told us this was the 34th Annual AMTRAK Century Ride put on by the Orange County Wheelmen. They left early this morning from the same train station we did and rode their bikes 100 miles to San Diego with several stops on the way. In San Diego their bikes were loaded into semi-trucks for the trip back north, and they had a private Metrolink train waiting for them at the San Diego station which left at 4:30 with something like 700 sweaty riders on board. The semis were at the Irvine station when we got there, and I'll bet it was a madhouse when the biker train rolled in 30 minutes or so later.

Some of the bikers rode back on our train (I guess they didn't get in on the private ride), but right behind us we had to listen to some old guy complain or comment about everything all the way from San Diego. I've never heard someone talk so much and say so little. It was like sitting in front of Cliff Claven or Barack Obama.

Here's one last shot of our northbound steed leaving Irvine with that idiot thankfully still on board.