We started off by walking a mile from Emily's apartment down to the light rail station. You wouldn't think a mile is very far to walk, but even with it only being about 60 degrees out it got fairly warm. Now I see why people bike. But once we got to the station, the credit/debit card reader was broken; so after some rig-a-ma-roll, I finally got some cash. Buying our tickets was pretty painless after that. It was only $5 for two all day passes. (I hear the fares are probably going up soon though!) FYI...the change you get back from the ticket machines comes to you in dollar coins. So keep that in mind when using a larger bill. I now have fifteen $1 coins! Which isn't that big of a deal I suppose...just unexpected. Hopefully the card reader won't be broken next time!
Anyways, once we got on it was a quick trip to downtown; maybe five minutes. Once down there, it was totally obvious that it was worth taking the light rail, cause it was crazy downtown. Plus, parking was like $15 bucks.
The rest of the afternoon/evening consisted of walking around, people watching, and dinner at Majerle's Sports Grill. I don't normally care much for "celebrity watching", I mean, they're just people. But, being a sports fan, it was pretty cool to see some of the NBA stars and athletes out-n-about. Just to drop a few names, we saw:
- Amare Stoudemire & Nate Robinson - They were holding a press conference of some sort Outside of Stoudemire's restaurant which is across from the arena. Nate Robinson won the dunk contest later that night.
- Terrell Owens - a.k.a. "T.O." NFL football player.
- Darryl Dawkins - Older NBA player from the late 70's & 80's.
- Bob Elliot - Famous for Emily at least :) Haha, ok not true. Apparently I'm out of the loop, cause lots of people were getting his autograph and picture. Guess it's a U of A thing!
- Hubert Davis - Former NBA player. More famous for currently being an ESPN college basketball analyst/comentator.
- Clyde Drexler - a.k.a., Clyde "The Glide" Drexler. Played in the 80's & 90's. One of the all time greats.
- Dominique Wilkins - Played in the 80's & 90's. One of the all time great dunkers.
2 comments:
nice dude! it's funny though cause I was more interested in your description of the light rail than the All Stars. Shows you where my priorities are! :)
Yeah, except for the snafu with the ticket machine's credit card system being down, the light rail worked really well. It was packed!
The main problem I see with the light rail though, is the lack of coverage. Right now the scope of its reach is so small that most people almost have to go out of the way to use it. In reality it needs to be about 10 times the size it is now.
Also, one thing that I noticed was that it had a map of all the stops in each train car, but it wasn't interactive. Meaning, they could have easily had the map light up which station you were at when you stopped...but it didn't. If you don't hear the automated message, you would be scrambling to figure out what station you are at, you know? Seems so simple to me. I can't believe they don't have it.
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