I won't get into the reasons why nobody helped me out, but I had to drop a car off at our mechanic and then walk home after work.  11 PM.  It was a warm night.  Why not I thought. 

I had to walk 12 miles south from Bellevue Washington to get home.  I stopped to rest twice.  It took almost three hours.

It hit me hard for a few days.

Picking up the car, and the other like it on another trip a few days ago was easier. 

I walk a mile to a bus stop and take the 240,  It meanders, but after it goes through a transfer station by I-90 I get off and walk another 2 miles to the mechanic and pick up the car.

Paying the thirty bucks for an Uber for the 12 mile hike getting home would have been smarter.  (But as a former Yellow Cab driver, I hate taking what I consider to be a gypsie cab.) 

Since I picked the car up the next day I wound up doing 15 miles in 12 hours after a shift at work where I walk at least two miles a day.  My feet hurt and I felt weak.

Busses here function well enough to get the precariat to and from work.  Everyone else has a car.  Without a car it takes a long time to get around.  Hours.

The level of service seems constant through the years.  Probably better here than in many places.  My route through the burbs ran on the hour.  But not at night.  The busses are air conditioned and in very good shape.

Seattle and the surrounding area did not do mass transit when they should have, but light rail is being built now between Seattle and Bellevue and south to Tacoma.  It is fancy and construction has been massive and fast.  The one existing line is now not as worthless as it was.

For years the only light rail ran between the Airport and Downtown Seattle.  Good for tourists and nobody else.  The line now goes north into Seattle underground with stops in three neighborhoods.  Soon the same line will go south from the Airport to Tacoma.

The lines are multi-billion dollar projects.  The rails cost over 200 million a mile.

It boggles my mind.  Ongoing the lines will be very useful for a few hundred people who live and work in exactly the right places.  Zipping between Seattle and Bellevue on fancy European Light Rail will be a thing.  A thing that costs a lot of bling.

 

That is the Seattle Airport control tower next to the light rail.  I rode this uncomfortable pig once.

I can't see how the twenty plus or so billion dollars spent to build all this can possibly make sense.  It serves essentially forty miles of bus route, and that is all.  A bus route with logistics which do not suit many local lifestyles since the rail line pops underground, rides elevated trusses, and crosses a lake.  I don't see many local residents using the thing on a regular basis.

On your left here you see my EMD (Excellent Mobility Device). It has a 40 mile range on a single charge and max speed of 15mph.  I use it primarily to go to Fred Meyer or Walmart for shopping.  These and a couple of other Big Box stores are the only places big enough to actually drive into with it for shopping.

To overcome this limitation, I have rigged a Trailer Hitch to pull my manual wheelchair behind it, so when I get to for instance a sushi bar for lunch, I can transfer to the manual and roll inside on that.

It's super energy efficient transportation, at least in the summer months when it's not raining.  It gets me that little bit of extra mobility which allows me more freedom and independence than the typical cripple in my position.

Right now however it is giving me a major headache due to its very wide turning radius.  Here at the Rehab Facility, I can leave it parked in the common area right outside my room.  However, I don't think I will be able to get it into most of the apartments which are available because the hallways are too narrow to turn it and drive it into the apartment.  I need the type of apartment that has its entrance directly to the outside, not from a common hallway.  Small elevators are also a problem.  Ideally of course I would have a garage to keep it with an electric door opener, but I haven't run across any with that architecture on the affordable housing wait lists I am on.

It will really depress me if I have to sell it in order to move out to independent living again.  It makes being independent so much more true.

RE