Ah, public transportation. The answer to everything from global warming to independence for elderly drivers deemed unfit for the road. Not that I’m afraid they might yank my license anytime soon, but I figure I should at least try to find out about it.
Not so easy. My plan, which seemed perfectly simple to me at the outset, was to visit the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena while my car was being serviced in Santa Clarita. Perfectly simple soon turned into a labyrinth.
It was suggested to me that I could find out everything on the MTA Web site from the comfort of my home. Right! First I should check out the museum’s Web page to find out the address, what hours it’s open and maybe if I can get there on the new Gold Line from Union Station.
I Googled Norton Simon Museum and get a page that tells me I need to clean up my computer and check for viruses with Norton something else. Three lines down, I read “Oops. We’ve moved to our own domain.” Still on this planet? I seem to be at the old domain but somehow link up to the Pasadena Visitors page and from there to Norton Simon Museum, 411 W. Colorado Blvd. at Orange Grove. I know where that is, at least by car.
They’re open from noon to six (not Tuesdays). While I’m in the neighborhood, so to speak, I check out the Huntington Library, which is open Tuesdays but not Mondays and only from noon to 4:30, at 1151 Oxford St., San Marino. As I remember, San Marino is a tony residential neighborhood not walking distance from Colorado Boulevard, or anywhere.
Okay, back to the MTA. At mta.net it says timetables are formatted in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat plug-in required). I’m not sure if my current PowerBook even has Acrobat Reader but I punch a key for the Gold Line and up pops a timetable. The Gold Line apparently makes it from Union Station to Pasadena in 36 minutes stopping at Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, Heritage Square, Southwest Museum, Highland Park, Mission, Fillmore, Del Mar, Memorial Park, Lake, Allen, Sierra Madre and Villa. No Colorado, no Orange Grove.
On another page, it says I need to get off the Gold Line at Allen and on the southwest corner of Allen and Corson, take the Metro Bus 686, South Fair Oaks. Use a transfer and get off at Colorado and Marion Avenue. They lost me at the corner of Allen and Corson.
Nevertheless, when I drop off my car at Santa Clarita Saturn, they ask if they can drive me somewhere. I tell them I want to go to the MetroLink station (two miles away) but I would like to take public transportation. The service manager looks at me as though I were deranged. He has no idea that Santa Clarita even has a public transportation system. Well, duh, it’s a car dealership.
There’s a bus stop a block away. I walk over and find a round-faced young woman (hardly more than a teenager) with a small child on her lap.
She rides the bus from Castaic every morning, transfers to another bus that takes her to the kid’s day care place, then takes another bus to College of the Canyons. After classes she takes another bus to a parenting class, then to pick up the kid, then two buses back to Castaic. Who says young people aren’t motivated?
I walk another block to the Santa Clarita Library to get the bus schedule, which they don’t have, but I meet a nice lady who recently moved into a Santa Clarita condo. She has a bus schedule which she lets me read, and says you can buy a monthly bus pass at the Senior Center for $12. She has a car, but prefers to ride the bus. She’s lived in Paris, where I learned the whole Metro system in about two days, never got lost, and found every museum because they’re all listed along with their Metro stops right inside the train cars.
I explain that I am trying to figure out if I can get to the Norton Simon on public transportation. She says she’d be game to give it a try sometime, and we exchange phone numbers. She winds up giving me her bus schedule saying she can get another from the bus driver on her way home. Wow. I’ve always met nice people in libraries, but bus stops? Who knew?
Anyway, the Norton Simon is for another day. I walk back to the Saturn place, making a pit stop at Barnes & Noble to pick up Yo Yo Ma’s new CD, “Obrigado Brazil,” and a latte.
The next morning I read in the paper the Gold Line suffered some kind of malfunction, tying up trains for several hours, and they had no idea when it would be back on schedule. Oh, and the MTA mechanics might go on strike since they’ve been working without a contract since January. This is not the kind of news to encourage ridership. So I’m picking out a new Saturn (33 mpg, 0 percent APR, $2K rebate, I couldn’t resist) since GM will not market a hybrid Saturn until 2005. By that time, I may no longer be driving but at least I hope to have mastered public transportation.