5 Hours Later

Well, so far I've been very impressed with our new home town. Denver is great. I had my first truly bad experience yesterday. It was my great idea to take the family downtown for lunch for Whit's birthday. A new Yard House just opened up and that's always been one of our favorite places to go. We love the fact that they have over 100 beers on tap. Ella has also been dying to ride the Light Rail. We hadn't yet done that and she asks about it every time she sees it, which is quite often since it runs right alongside of the freeway. So, I thought that this would be a great opportunity to fulfill Ella's dream of riding on the Light Rail (apparently she has some pretty big dreams!) and Whit's craving for the Yard House.

I did everything that I always do. I researched the Light Rail online. I found out about their parking fees, fare fees, and which line would take us to within blocks of our destination. We needed to take the F line. The Light Rail schedule was also on their website, but I wasn't able to access the F line schedule because whenever I clicked on the link it gave me a technical error message. No biggie. I just looked at the other line's Saturday schedules and saw that the trains came about every 15 minutes or so. I figured that it would be about the same.

We arrived at the local Light Rail station closest to our house. It's only about a 5 minute drive. We got there a little bit past Noon. Parking was a breeze. Since I had researched the ticked prices prior to our arrival, that was easy, too. As we were buying the tickets, I noticed a train at the station. It was the E line and I knew that we needed the F line. So, we didn't get on. Then the trouble started. Leigh and I looked at the schedule that was posted at the train station to find out when the next F train would be arriving. Apparently, the F line doesn't run during the weekend. So, when I had tried to search the schedule online and a technical error message popped up, really it meant that the F train doesn't run on weekends. Why didn't they just put that in their link?

We found out that the only train that runs on the weekends is the E line. This goes to the opposite side of downtown, so we would have to catch a bus. Since we had already bought the tickets, we figured that we would just do that. We noticed that the next E train didn't arrive on time to the station. Then there was an station announcement about track repairs and trains being delayed. We debated whether or not we should just drive to downtown (it's only about a 25 minute drive). Again we decided to just give it a few more minutes. After 30 minutes of waiting, another E train finally arrived. We thought that we were home free. Nope. The train went about 3 stops and then stopped. Apparently the track repairs meant that the northbound and southbound trains were all sharing a track for a portion of the trip. So, we had to wait for 2 southbound trains to pass before we could use the track. We waited for another 30 minutes before the train could go again.

When we finally arrived downtown, it was about 1:45. We were able to get onto the bus right away and we arrived at the Yard House by 2:00. The bus is another story. Why don't city bus riders wear deodorant? Our lunch was great, but I couldn't fully enjoy it because I knew that we had to deal with the bus and train fiasco again. It was similar to our trip up. Crowded city bus, late train, delay on train. We finally arrived back at our home station at about 5:00. So what should have taken a couple of hours took about 5 hours. I don't know if I'll take the Light Rail again. What if we had lunch reservations? I would have been so mad. They should have had some information about the delays on the website. I had just been on it earlier that morning. Not a good experience. Especially with a 4-year-old.