Month / May 2025

by Adron

Thursday Wrap Up, Some Standard Seattle.

I ride up to Capital Hill and check out Elliot Bay Books. I find the book I’m looking for, “Apple in China: The Capture of The World’s Greatest Company” and have a sit down at book store coffee shop, Oddfellows, for a read and drink. Upon purchasing a delightful Arnold Palmer I take a seat and dive right into one of the chapters. It’s the section on Navy Seals, not the real Navy Seals mind you, but a group of security folks that ended up dubbed the Navy Seals. But I digress, after reading a while I purchased the book, tossed it in my backpack and back upon my steed I rode. After the drop back into downtown Seattle I went over to Union and boarded the next Sound Transit 550 Express.

That’s where the stupid started. Upon arriving at the South Bellevue Station to transfer to the Link Light Rail, I realized the train was off. As in, there was no applied power. I had just took the elevator up to the platform, but the train power seemed to be off. I stook patiently by the train waiting, and listening to the driver’s radio chatter. It sounded like the power had just been restored. Great, I thought!

So I boarded. The AC kicked on, but the train had been there long enough without power in this 80+ degree day that it was hot inside. As the train sat there the driver exited his driver’s cabin (cockpit?) and tried over and over again to fix the front right door. It seemed to be stuck in a state of being closed but in alarm. The normally blue lights of the door shown red, and he worked on it and worked on it. Opening the bay overhead and fiddling and fiddling.

Finally, off we went with the door, theoretically, fixed. Arriving at the very next station however things went sideways again. The door opened, but then upon closing went into an alarm state again. After attempting to shut the doors several times, the driver again existed the driver’s cabin and started fiddling with the door again. The interesting thing, was the lights went green this time instead of red when the door was in alarm. The other oddball thing was, the train wouldn’t depart.

Yay Seattle issues! We’ve gold plated things at ludicrous prices yet still get these ridiculous toothing problems. I’ll give em’ this, at least on the east side the line is relatively new, so these kinds of things happen. But hot damn it’s rather ridiculous.

After a few more attempts and another half dozen Sound Transit employees and Sound Transit security showing up they fiddled and fiddle with it and eventually it shut, the lights went blue, and off we went.

Finally, after almost 8 minutes, we arrived in Bellevue. For the record, it usually takes about 2-3 minutes to get from South Bellevue to downtown Bellevue.

But whatever, it’s a nice day and things were going well otherwise. I got to read a book, enjoyed a nice drink, and rode my bike around the city. A solid day plus a significant number of code contributions for the day too.

As for the book mentioned above that I purchased, it’s a must read if you want to get a solid grasp of the magnitude of how much the west basically sold off to develop China (and hats off to China for benefiting off that) with the misleading idea that China would become more focused on freedom, liberty, individual rights, and opening up to the world. Even though the book is about Apple, the correlations to what Apple has done tightly correlates to what transit and transportation organizations and companies have done for and in China. But I digress, more on all that later!

by Adron

A Re-introduction to Transit Sleuth via Link Light Rail

Today marks about the ~20th or so day I’ve ridden the light rail from Redmond to South Bellevue, and then transferred to the Sound Transit Express 550 from there to downtown.

My commute priority has always been about functional use versus speed or other criteria. When I write functional use, what I mean is can I use the commute for something besides just wasting away rotting like one might do in a cage (i.e. a car). Even when I have used a car in the past, the focus still remained exactly that.

Simply put, I despise the idea I follow the modern American tradition of plopping myself into a car, that I’ve worked a job to buy, to sit in traffic – often stop and go or just stopped – to go to a job that I work to do shit like buy a car. I prefer my job funds go to strategic and tactical things like living life. Travel, exploration, games, beer, good food, racing cars, bikes, more bikes, and other entertaining and enriching things vs. buying a car, maintaining a car, paying rent, and all that rat race bullshit.

So now that I’ve written this, I hope to be back soon on a regular basis writing on this blog. If for any other reason, because I enjoy it. But also to document my commuting adventures and related things. Hopefully I’ll conjure up the energy to also start putting videos together again, ya know like this one, this, or this.

Back to the Link Light Rail

With the opening of the Redmond Station, the commute – even in spite of it being 2 parts still – has dramatically improved. Largely because I can take a significant part of the trip via light rail. That means listening to music, getting some code written, videos watched, maybe edited, AI’s vibe coding, views observed, maybe a snack, some AI models processed, or simply enjoying my coffee while en route to the office.

Sometimes, shockingly, I’ll even meet someone and we’ll have a good solid kick ass conversation while en route! But why am I riding the light rail these days?

How Did I Get Here?

Ok, somewhat dreadfully, based on the Seattle area leadership’s inability to deliver on much of anything promised, the Ballard Link Light Rail didn’t look like it was ever going to happen in my life time (i.e. the next ~20-40 years at least). The house I lived in also wasn’t cutting it, so family deemed a new house was in order and we began to search a few years back.

It was hard going. Forget money even, which is it’s own problem with housing these days, houses just weren’t available. Not with the basic – for us – that put a house into qualifying. The characteristics of the house we wanted, in order of importance;

  • being on a trail(s) or dedicated bike infrastructure
  • being near park(s) and woodland space
  • being away from any primary interstate or highway arterial (preferable to stay away from carcinogens)
  • being near transit options to get into and out of Seattle downtown
  • being near transit options to get to King St Station and SEATAC and/or other airport with area departure options.
  • being away from any primary roadway arterial
  • being most quiet
  • being walkable (i.e. do sidewalks exist, do business exist?)
  • being low crime (honestly, only sort of important in certain ways)
  • minimum number of rooms for remote/home work in addition to kiddo space
  • no HOA cuz forget that shortsighted self-fascistic nonsense
  • MAGAt density is no more than 1 out of 10 (super easy in this area, since low crime areas have very low MAGAt density) **
  • minimum ~1600 square feet
  • enough land to use for a victory garden (i.e. something like ~200 sq ft minimum, more is better)

Redmond? What? Not intuitive!

Naturally we assumed we could only really get something that would have maybe ~3-5 of these items, and then maybe part of another 5-10. We searched and searched and searched and finally, after offers put in, offers turned down, we finally expanded our search outside of Seattle to some east side locations and landed an offer in Redmond. Somewhat shockingly it has a multitude of these things in full and all of them to a partial degree.

The only things Redmond, outside of its downtown core fails on is a few things;

  • Walkability to do anything useful outside of Redmond’s downtown core is questionable and often requires other modal options to complete. However, that said, almost everywhere in Redmond has sidewalks, clear paths, and ways to get places, it just might take 15-45 minutes depending on where one lives.
  • Transit options are spectacular if you are in the downtown core. However leaving the downtown core it becomes immediately questionable whether you will have good transit options.
  • The light rail, as this post is about, massively changes the dynamic into and out of Redmond, Bellevue, and in about a year – theoretically – into Seattle for the east side. Even without the bridge into Seattle being open, it’s still changed the dynamic of the east side in a very positive way.
  • Even though we’re away from primary arterials and highways, interstates, and the like. The roadway system is setup in an auto-focused way that leads people to some expediently stupid behaviors. Negligence and obliviousness – as you might expect – reign supreme with east side drivers. The majority do endeavor to be polite and all but people generally just suck at driving. So YMMV in your automotive driver interactions.

With that being the baseline we have ended up over here in Redmond. So far it’s actually pretty sweet, more so than I thought when we first made the decision and landed the house. Simply put, we live a very European style life over here in Redmond and recently I’ve started commuting to a downtown Seattle office.

Back to The Topic At Hand: Link Light Rail Line 2

My commute now ends up being an interesting and enjoyable string of modal options.

1st – To get to the Link station, I come down from the Redmond hills via bike. There I roll into the now open station, swipe my Orca Card, bump the elevator button and up I go to board the Link.

2nd – Upon boarding the Link I rack the bike. Extremely easy to do since this is the originating station and I generally board a train that has few people on it at its start. Then off we zip toward the – current – other end of the line in South Bellevue. During this segment of the trip I take a seat and out comes the laptop. As mentioned earlier in the post the code, videos, editing, or other activities ensue. After the short trip as we leave the stop just before South Bellevue I slip the laptop back into my pack, and unrack the bike for departure. Upon an elevator ride down, I roll over to wait for the arrival of the Seattle bound Sound Transit Express 550.

3rd – The bus fills the current gap while they wrap up construction work on the I-90. The 550 serves the purpose well, and it isn’t overly packed. This puts me in a position to whip the laptop back out and spend a little more time getting shit done, reading, or whatever I may. Upon arrival in downtown I alight the bus, unrack my bike, and then begin the last short segment to the office.

4th – I then enjoy this last segment riding Spacey to the office. It’s always a smooth, seamless, trip around and along various roads and bike infra in downtown. I tend to change up the route just a bit every time I take the trip.

That’s it. That’s my commute these days, and hot damn it’s an enjoyable one! This time of year especially as the weather gets nice and I’m a quick roll – amidst the hilarious insanity of the car oriented commute – to breweries, the epic Seattle waterfront, and other places to chill before the trip home.

More adventures, thoughts, and interludes of written words in the coming days and weeks. Hope your commute rocks, or if you don’t, that you’ve got an enjoyable day to day. Cheers!

** MAGA specifically. Not a fan of confused fascists. I realize this does not include general Republicans or conservatives, especially of the Reagan, Eisenhower, or even Lincoln variety. Since obviously, none of those Presidents were fascists, maybe shitty, but not wannabe fascists.

by Adron

Link Light Rail opens in Redmond

I wrote about some pedantic details in the last post here. Check that for some nuggets and the current situation logistically. But read on for some observations from opening day!

I wrote a thread on Mastadon, Threads, and Blue Sky too. Click through to check em’ out.

Thread Summary
– Redmond light rail opening today: Celebrating the debut of service to Redmond Technology Station.
– First southbound ride: The fresh thrill of speeding out of Bellevue, over I-405 and sprawling lots, into Redmond.
– Elevated magic: The segment between Wilburton and Bellevue stations, soaring above streets in a blink—reducing a 5-10-minute slog to 45 seconds of pure “whee.”
– Empty parking lots everywhere: Wild expanses of asphalt ripe for redevelopment—if the economy holds up.
– Broken elevator / IYKYK: Only one failing escalator on the 2 Line over at Wilburton. That’s a seemingly good ratio for Sound Transit and escalators.
– Bike corral buzz: Cascadia Bikes’ racks overflowing—major props to everyone who pedaled in.

Rolling into Redmond Technology Station for the First Time
There’s nothing quite like that first southbound trip into Redmond Technology Station. After waiting months for what I personally will now find the most useful segment of light rail in the area. It seems the wait has taken eons.

The Elevated Spectacle
Peek out the window as you depart Bellevue Station: a dizzying montage of concrete and greenery. The rail track climbs, slicing through the skyline with surgical precision. Down below, cars inch along, helplessly stuck in gridlock. Up here, you’re at street level with the brids—or at least with the tops of pine trees. It’s the kind of view that makes you feel like the future might arrive in the USA yet, albeit one powered by a modest electric motor humming serenely beneath the floor.

Asphalt Oceans & Urban Dreams
West of the station lies an ocean of empty parking lots—so vast you’d think Microsoft itself had spawned them all. It’s eerie, almost dystopian… until you remember the upside: raw redevelopment potential. Imagine mixed-use towers, live/work lofts, parks, eateries—an entire urban neighborhood rising from the asphalt. That is, assuming our economy doesn’t implode in the next couple of years, as that might lead to it not happening for decades upon decades. Fingers crossed, America, fingers crossed.

Two Wheels, One Corral
Shout-out to Cascadia Bikes for setting up a deluxe bike corral—overflowing with riders who made the wise call to pedal in. Seriously, if you rolled up on two wheels, you’re a genius. Fresh air commute, zero parking worries, and you still get to high-five your fellow cyclists. Hats off—or helmets on—to you.

Mode-Shaming: Because Someone Has To

  • Biked: You’re smart.
  • Walked/Bus’d: Good call.
  • Drove: You’re a jack-ass clogging up the pedestrian friendly area of town. Why even? Don’t do that shit.

Next time, ditch the car and catch the train. Your neighbors (and everyone’s blood pressure) will thank you.

More Technical Details

The new bike routes to the stations are spectacular, check out more about them here.