I'm in a sour mood today even though I shouldn't be. Christmas, and all its attendant annoyances, is gone for another six months. I just spent some QT visiting with the family. It's warming up. I still have a job and one or two bucks left in the bank account.
So far, it's stranded me downtown twice, once costing me a sizable sum in taxi fare, the other time resulting in a brisk eight-block walk when the trains were too full to carry my co-workers and I back to work after lunch.
My story begins on Saturday night, the day of the grand opening of the light-rail line. With my parents in town, visiting from the depressed, cold, gray state of Michigan, we were geeked about being among the first riders of Valley Metro. So, around 7:30 p.m., the missus, my folks and I bundled up, got in the car, and drove to the park-n-ride lot at Central and Camelback, where we were going to hop the train and zip downtown for some dinner at Portland's, right across the street from the Roosevelt/Central station.