Day: June 22, 2009

Take the 70 or 79

First, my prayers are with the families and victims of those who lost their lives on the Red Line, and with those injured. Please keep all the riders of the Red Line in your thoughts or prayers as WMATA deals with this tragedy.

Now, how are you going to get to work tomorrow? There is the 70 bus. The long accordion bus that rides up 7th Street. You can take that to Silver Spring. You can also take the 79 Express bus, that also gets you to Silver Spring. You can catch both of them at the corner of 7th and Rhode Island at the Asbury Dwelling building.
Buses will be packed if WMATA has the tracks between Fort Totten and Takoma Park are shut down. It is possible they’ll have trains sharing a track, maybe not.
There is a bus the J2(?) that goes to Silver Spring from College Park Metro, which is on the Green Line. The the the C2(? Sorry I’m guessing the WMATA site is overloaded so I can’t check my bus info, I’m working from memory) that goes to Wheaton from College Park.
If anyone has any other info about buses that get to the north part of the Red Line?

The new guys

This is one of those posts I fear because as soon as I write something positive, a gang of fire-bomb throwing drug dealing door to door con-artist ax murdering plant thieves descend upon the neighborhood. But here goes….
We are no longer up for sale. To my knowledge all the houses on my street have been bought or are under some serious contract. The New New Guy, as opposed to the New Guy and the Other New Guy, was at his place with a contractor and happy to get the neighbors. We got 3 new guys. I had already met the Other New Guy when he was Potential Buyer Dude, and I was probably a little stand offish early on. Mainly because I didn’t know if he was an investor or a person with intentions of living on the block. But now he’s the Other New Guy and I’ve already done the neighborly thing of lending him tools. So for the most part our block (once the two new guys bring in furniture and the other place is confirmed sold) is stabilizing. The old families aren’t going anywhere, there are only a handful of houses rented out, and the majority of the households are rainbow collared** middle class.
And Sunday was just a lovely day. The Bloomingdale Farmer’s Market was good and I enjoyed the Confit Duck Ravioli from Copper Pot. I bought a bunch of cherries and made several batches of cherry liquor to sit. Got strawberries to make more fruit spread and blueberries for my own yogurt mix in.
Besides the monsoon type rains, the neighborhood looked great.

**Some families are middle class through prudence and good financial habits, some have businesses where they work with their hands and get dirty, not everyone is a desk jockey.