The Metro and Street Musicians

The new job is going pretty well. It's actually kind of fun to be working in downtown DC again, though I suspect the novelty of riding the metro will wear off eventually. For now, however, I still feel a little bit of the excitement I remember from when my family came to DC on a vacation one year when I was 8 or 9. I was fascinated by the metro cards with the little magnetic strip down the side and the anticipation caused by the flashing lights in the floor that was followed by the *whoosh* of the train as it flew into the station and came to a stop with a screech and squeal of the brakes.

But what I remember most was how wide the escalators seemed. In the malls in New Mexico (which is the sum total of most of my escalator experience to that point) the escalators were the single-person width ones. Coming here, where most of the escalators are two people wide, was an exercise in fascination. I remember how my sister and I were amazed at the yellow footprints painted on the steps in the Air and Space Museum, and while the Apollo-Soyuz definitely overrode any excitement caused by escalators, I still remember both.

These days my metro trip begins in Rosslyn, home of the steepest and longest escalator I have ever experienced (according to the caption on the photo in the Wikipedia article I linked to the name, it's the 3rd longest continuous escalator in the world). I'm amazed, daily, at the people who run down the stairs - I tried walking once but got so dizzy and disoriented that I spent the remainder of the trip down clinging to the handrail trying desperately not to fall over. Now I just stand to the side and ride, even if it means I miss the first train and have to wait for another. In the mornings, I enjoy the ride because there are two musicians - a guitar and recorder (I think it's a recorder, I need to pay more attention) - and they fill the station with delightful music. I think I would term it "Discovery Channel Music" because I can picture this music as the background to a documentary on some ancient people group, with a deep voiced narrator over the slower parts and a collage of flashing pictures accompanied by the faster sections. It's a pleasant start to the day and, for the first time in my life, I actually seriously consider purchasing one of the CDs they have displayed in their guitar case.

On the way home the ride back up the escalator isn't nearly as interesting musically. Sometimes there are people there playing, but they just don't seem to be as good as the morning folks. So instead I spend my time listening to the conversations of the people riding down who don't seem to realize what an incredible echo chamber the arched concrete overhead creates. It's fun to listen as they talk in normal, or even hushed, voices to the people on the stair next to them and have it sound as if they're standing next to you talking. You only get snippets as the conversations glide in and out of range, but it's enough to let you construct little versions of their lives and make you wonder how accurate you are. Sometimes people watching is the best part of a commute.