Birthday Fail
Feb. 7th, 2009 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothNot my birthday -- Snowwy's. Only three people showed up (four if you count him), and no one else remembered and/or was able to buy a ticket for the movie online (apparently, Fandango doesn't work with IE). So he ended up watching it by himself.
Then I got to spend an hour and change wandering around downtown, up and down 3rd and 5th (and eventually 4th even though it was one-way the wrong direction, because I got desperate) looking for a place to catch the 550 back to Bellevue. I knew that the interenational district was too far, and that Westlake Center was too far, so somewhere in there there were at least two stops... but where? WHERE?!
None of the bus maps had anything about the sound transit routes (which the 550 was one of), except to say that it usually used the bus tunnel. Not on weekends! I asked someone waiting for a bus where to catch it, and they didn't know. I asked a crazy lady who'd just gotten out of prison and insisted she wasn't a drug dealer, and she offered to drive me back to Tacoma. "Bellevue." "Sure, whatever, I'm going that way, get in." "No thanks, I'll go check over on 3rd like you said!" *flee!*
Finally, I decided to stop in a coffee shop and check the web -- I'd tried hanging around outside the Starbucks to leech off their wifi, but apparently they didn't have wifi. Well, neither did the Seattle's Best Coffee that was still open (for another 5 minutes, when I went in). The waitress swore that the 550 went on 3rd and 4th and hey look! There it is!
So I ran to catch it -- I was on 4th, so it was going the wrong way, but maybe? "Hey, can I ride this one all the way back to Bellevue?" "No..." "So, uh, where can I catch the one back to Bellevue?" "Over on 2nd."
...
GRRGH
Oh, and it turned out I also could have caught it on 5th if I'd gone a little farther down 5th into the international district, to the transit center there. The route I was looking for made a big L shape through downtown, and I essentially flood-filled the area inside the L without actually going far enough in either direction to find the route.
I hate Seattle.
Then I got to spend an hour and change wandering around downtown, up and down 3rd and 5th (and eventually 4th even though it was one-way the wrong direction, because I got desperate) looking for a place to catch the 550 back to Bellevue. I knew that the interenational district was too far, and that Westlake Center was too far, so somewhere in there there were at least two stops... but where? WHERE?!
None of the bus maps had anything about the sound transit routes (which the 550 was one of), except to say that it usually used the bus tunnel. Not on weekends! I asked someone waiting for a bus where to catch it, and they didn't know. I asked a crazy lady who'd just gotten out of prison and insisted she wasn't a drug dealer, and she offered to drive me back to Tacoma. "Bellevue." "Sure, whatever, I'm going that way, get in." "No thanks, I'll go check over on 3rd like you said!" *flee!*
Finally, I decided to stop in a coffee shop and check the web -- I'd tried hanging around outside the Starbucks to leech off their wifi, but apparently they didn't have wifi. Well, neither did the Seattle's Best Coffee that was still open (for another 5 minutes, when I went in). The waitress swore that the 550 went on 3rd and 4th and hey look! There it is!
So I ran to catch it -- I was on 4th, so it was going the wrong way, but maybe? "Hey, can I ride this one all the way back to Bellevue?" "No..." "So, uh, where can I catch the one back to Bellevue?" "Over on 2nd."
...
GRRGH
Oh, and it turned out I also could have caught it on 5th if I'd gone a little farther down 5th into the international district, to the transit center there. The route I was looking for made a big L shape through downtown, and I essentially flood-filled the area inside the L without actually going far enough in either direction to find the route.
I hate Seattle.
