Monday, November 30, 2009

a blunder already

oops......screwed up already.......yesterday was my first timid entry and I notice that I dated it "October".....NOT....... Should have been November. Oh well.......it's like geting the first scratch on your new car....now I have goofed perhaps I can stop worrying that I will. I have something else to worry about anyway......tomorrow I must get up at the crack of dawn take the subway down to Union Station and the Amtrak to Irvine to meet with Vera's husband, Cy and her sister Murie. Haven't seen Murie for almost 70 years (will we recognize each other????) and only met Cy once in 1994 at the 50th reunion of West Philly High's class of '44. I keep vacilating between being excited and hitting myself on the head for committing to this excursion. Fortunately, I enjoy both the subway and the train. If you had told me a few years ago that I would become a fan of that ridiculously expensive hole in the ground known as the Los Angeles Subway I would have considered you sadly demented. I could not believe that it was worth the effort to go to all that trouble for just a few miles worth of track, but since they somehow had the foresight to have it start a few blocks from my house in North Hollywood and end at downtown in Union Station I have had to apologize abjectly. It really makes it relatively easy for me to take the train and I have done so a number of times always very successfully. I used to love the subway/elevated in Philly and have loved subways all over the world.......the London tube...great, Paris Metro ... fantastic and so are the subways in Budapest and Prague. Having this abbreviated one here makes Los Angeles almost a first class city instead of a loose collection of suburbs looking for a hub. I guess I have gotten to the "glass is half full" stage....I am feeling that what we have is actually better than nothing and tomorrow it will prove its worth one more time. Must be careful not to get mugged and definitely careful not to fall onto the tracks.