Saturday we went over to Fort Worth to see the Egyptian exhibit. It was quite interesting and I want to write more about it after I think on it some. It is amazing to me how crowded museums are when they have these special exhibits. I remember going to museums on lazy afternoons when I had the place virtually to myself. What a luxury that was.

We decided to make the journey entirely by public transportation. Or almost entirely. We met our friends Charlie and Susan at their house and then went from there to the “park and ride” station near their place. Susan had planned it all out - we would take a local train to Union Station downtown, where we could transfer to a train to Fort Worth. Once there we could pick up a bus at the train terminal that would drop us off right next to the museum. It worked pretty smoothly. There was only a short delay waiting for the bus, before a supervisor called one on a walkie-talkie and got us on our way a few minutes ahead of schedule. Other than that the timing was good and we arrived at the museum practically on the dot, according to the schedule Susan had planned. Not very crowded either and all very nice, quiet and clean.

Coming back was not quite as pleasant an experience. It was the same equipment of course, but in reverse we seemed to have longer waits. After a day of walking around the museum and finding a nearby restaturant, we were getting tired and our sense of adventure was wearing thin. For some reason on the trip back both trains were packed. The intracity one was plagued too with a gaggle of teenage girls loudly bragging to each other about how they had lied to their parents about going to the local mall and instead took a train to another city 60 miles away. Their sense of adventure was still high.

I have to admit that I rarely use public transportation. When I first moved to Dallas I rode the bus regularly to my downtown office. I was okay with it except that I sometimes worked late and didn’t feel entirely comfortable waiting at the stops after dark. Time was another problem. Including walking to and from the bus stops it took about three times as long as driving. Now my office is located such that it is not really feasible to get there any way but car.

The trains we took Saturday have a much different feel and a different clientele than the daily bus I took to work. The bus carried a few office workers but a lot more blue-collar workers in drab and unstylish clothes, kids on the way to school and the old and infirm. These trains on the other hand seemed to be full of middle-class families and tourists on sight-seeing expeditions. I would like to make this trip again on a weekday to see how it is different. Only the last leg of the trip seemed truly urban. Passing through the underground stations I imagined for a moment I was in a real city instead of an overgrown suburb. At nine o’clock on a Saturday night every seat was taken and the aisles were filling up. In the seat ahead of me a young Asian man in dark chinos and a sleeveless ribbed undershirt was intently using a yellow marker on a thick book that contained music notation. I strained in vain to see over his shoulder the title of the book or read some of the text. The next Beethoven in training? Two stops ahead of ours he closed the book in his lap and placed one of those giveaway “apartment locator” magazines on top of it, then got up and vanished through the doors.