An Adventure

The SMART train goes from Santa Rosa to San Rafael, and our friends who live near San Rafael, invited us to lunch today. Being staunch advocates of public transportation, they said they'd pick us up at the station if we took the train. Now I know that for many Blippers, the train is pretty old hat, but here it constitutes an adventure. Here's how it went today...

We got up to a freezing cold house because for some reason the heat did not and would not go on. Leaving Ozzie to hold the fort (he has a fur coat) we drove across town to the train station. Well, actually not the train station because it is all two hour parking near the station, so we parked in a garage and walked through the square, and the underpass which goes under the mal,l arriving eventually at the station and, more importantly, at  Flying Goat coffee. While I ordered Aztek Mochas, OilMan tackled the ticket machine for the train.

I finally went in search of him when he didn't return...the ticket machine is NOT user friendly. I do think it's one of those things that work just fine once you know how it works and, fortunately for us, there was a savvy passenger who was willing to explain the finer points of getting the machine to spit out a Clipper card which is good on the Larkspur Ferry, the San Francisco Muni, and the peninsula CalTrain, but all we wanted to do was go to San Rafael. We each needed our own ticket, so he had to go back and stand in line again for the second one. We didn't go to the transit center (not near the train platform) to prove that we are indeed old and eligible for a senior ticket, because we didn't know we needed to do that,  so OilMan opted for a regular one. They are cleverly priced to make one $20 ticket not enough for a round trip ticket, so he had to opt for a $40 one...well, two $40 ones....

The train is very nice. It came on time to the minute. It has bathrooms, a snack bar, comfortable seats and WiFi. I felt a slight thrill as the train pulled out of the station and enjoyed the trip past all the slow spots in the freeway, many of which we could see as we sped past on the train.

Our friends picked us up, gave us a wonderful lunch, including deviled eggs...my favorite...we walked to their allotment...common in Britain but not so much in Marin County...followed by a circuit on the walking path which was once...wait for it...train tracks!

We reversed the whole process on the way home, made considerably easier by the fact that we already had our ticket, and walked back to the garage where we parked our car. I took the picture of the fellow and his dog on the, er, tricked out motorcycle on the way. We  liberated our car it for another $8 and drove home to Ozzie and a warm house. We have no idea why, but apparently Ozzie persuaded the heat to go on.

It was a wonderful adventure and one which we will probably repeat...if only because we still have quite a bit of money left on our $80 worth of Clipper cards...I hope.