Sunday, Freezing, Sunday
Author : martymankins - April 21, 2008
It’s hard to believe it was 70 degrees on Saturday. I was riding my scooter in the sun (and fierce winds) and now on Sunday, I was looking for something heavier than my gray hoodie. That still didn’t stop me from carrying out the plans I had. Public Rail For the last 7 years, Salt Lake City has been moving forward in expanding their public transportation solutions. In December 1999, TRAX (our light rail system) opened. A few years ago, a second leg of the light rail opened. And Sunday was a vendor preview of the new commuter rail, Front Runner. This train, unlike the smaller light rail trains, is full-sized. With a top speed of 79 mph, it gets up and moves. And it was smooth as it traveled the full destination: Salt Lake to Ogden, with the occasional stops at all of the completed rail stations in between. I’ve always been a big supporter of public transportation. I mean, I could live in New York if I needed to, hopping on and off subways and rail systems without an issue. When I worked in downtown SLC, I rode TRAX every day, only driving to work twice in an 18-month period of time. At this time, I don’t live that far from work (a bit more than 3 miles each way), so the scooter and my car take me where I need to go. But I often choose rail over car when they are available. So any trips I need to take to Ogden, I’ll be sure to take Front Runner. Even the cold can’t stop the BBQ It’s no secret that I love to BBQ and I always look forward to summertime so I can cook up some great meals: burgers, salmon, steak, shish-ka-bob and anything else that tastes good bar-b-q’d. So after our train ride, I came home, prepared some meat patties and put them on the grill. Of course, the whole time I was watching them, I stood as close to the heat as I could to stay warm. The rest of this week is looking pretty dismal, but maybe by Saturday, we’ll reach the 70’s again so I can start to hope that summer wasn’t here for just two days.
Sunday, Freezing, Sunday by Banal Leakage, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I skimmed my feed reader quickly at work and thought you had a BBQ on the train platform, hahaha!
April 21st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Hey.. that’s not a bad idea. The grill is portable, but I don’t think I could have made enough burgers for 400+ people. It was bad enough most of the people there took 5-6 waters, 12 cookies and 20 Nature’s Valley granola bars per person. Of course, this is a free event in Utah we are talking about.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
How far does the TRAX run? Is it connected to the major US railways? It would be great to just hop on a train to NYC. I know we have an Amtrak from Chicago to NYC (and other locations of course) here, but I just don’t know about it…
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
TRAX runs about 17 miles, at least the main leg. It goes to the Union Pacific station, which is right next to the new Front Runner which should connect to a train to NYC. We also have Amtrak here as well.