4 notes

1. Those subway and sewer vents in downtown are veritable chasms whispering my siren song. I'm not convinced that I won't plummet to my demise some day walking over those evil grates but I'll be damned if i'm not gonna risk it. I've observed the plight of my chewing gum and it's not pretty. But that's why I carry around my Mary Poppins umbrella. Well, one of the reasons I carry around my Mary Poppins umbrella.
2. The NBA playoffs are no longer my friend. I had three teams that I was really excited about watching. All three lost last round. Not only that, they either played half-ass or suffered the pangs and arrows of outrageous officiating. The only thing I can fall back on now are my childhood sweethearts, the Utah Jazz, which captivated every soon-to-be-five-eleven-white-kid-from-spokane-washington back in the day. But Mr. Stockton and his crew broke my heart too many times in adolescence for me to lightly dig those pompoms out of storage.
3. I swallowed a bug while running today. That little bastard bee-lined straight for my non-existent tonsils and fulfilled his kamikaze pledge. Although I'm not convinced that dying in a violent phlegm tornado is really that honorable, I must commend him on his aim.
4. I didn't really have a fourth point. But, damn, the first three were really good. Really, really good.

Escalating excitement for everybody

I had an interesting talk with my roommate, Atif, last night about the merits of escalator systems. Atif, a worldly gentleman with an acute interest in urban development, described to me how the Public Transportation system in Kiev, Ukraine contains no such escalators and, instead, utilizes an extended ramp system to facilitate subway riders issuing forth from the train platform to sunlight and vice versa. From the sounds of it, however, the subway trains run essentially directly below the ground. Therefore, although the idea of conserving electricity, encouraging exercise, and simplifying the aesthetic tantalizes the imagination, it simply isn’t practical in every metropolitan area.

DC constitutes one such area where subways cannot always run directly below the ground. Due to gentle, but consistent elevation changes, a meandering creek bed with a steep, deep drop, and the depth of stable ground at some locations, DC’s metro boasts some of the longest escalators in the world. In particular, the Wheaton Metro on DC’s Red Line hosts the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere at a length of 230 feet (the Forest Glen station, just preceding the Wheaton station, is actually deeper at 196 feet, but the only access in and out is via elevator).

Which leads me to my next point: why didn’t anybody tell me about the escalator system in Hong Kong. Jerks. For the unschooled riff-raff like myself, Hong Kong boasts the world’s longest outdoor escalator system in the world. The escalator system provides such essential transportation for Hong Kong’s commuting masses, that they treat it like an expressway in the United States (think Seattle). In the morning, the escalators operate only downhill for the workers to descend to the business districts, and then operate from 10am until midnight only uphill. This escalator system, christened the Mid-Levels Escalator, consists of 20 escalators and 3 moving sidewalks. It is 800 meters long, and climbs 135 vertical meters. If you were the typical American and let the escalator do all the work, total travel time takes 20 minutes.

I just gotta know, has anybody ever run the entire 800 meters upward against the down escalators? Epic.

The wrath of the escalator

The escalator at one of the Metro stops in Virginia decided to devour my friend Taryn's shoe a couple weeks ago. This is the aftermath of the devastation. Although the shoe met it's brutal demise, the foot arose unscathed. Logic would direct most criticism towards the design of the escalator, I, however, decided to blame Virginia and call it good.