I've gotten fairly practiced over the years in the fine (and, occasionally, not-so-fine) art of Not Driving. I'm nowhere near the level of a woman that I knew in grad school, who just stuck out her thumb and hitchhiked everywhere, but that's the magic of living in Northern California. No matter what particular lifestyle you're enmeshed in, you're always going to run into someone more hardcore about it than you.So, for me, every new story in a new location is also an experiment in figuring out how to not drive there. In this case, I had to interview a scientist at a bee laboratory in Davis, California. First I dug up a UC Berkeley-UC Davis shuttle, which I figured that I might be able to charm myself onto with my student ID. But the scheduling was all wrong for when I needed to be there. Then I stumbled upon the excellent Davis Wiki, where I found out that Davis is a bicyclist's paradise, and that the Capitol Corridor Amtrak train not only goes right through Davis and has bike facilities, but it also, wonder of wonders, runs on time (This is unheard-of for Amtrak these days. I took a cross-country train back from the Midwest this summer that wound up being about eight hours late.)
The only other guy waiting for the train with me at the Richmond BART stop turned out to be a lawyer. The train itself was the nicest I've ever seen - spotless. Every car had spacious tables (most occupied by guys in suits in ties, studiously typing away at their laptops, surrounded by a nest of leather-bound personal organizers and abstruse paperwork.)
Electrical sockets stretched down both sides of every railcar, ready to be plugged by a thicket of adapters. Gorgeous scenery rolled by on both sides, through the sparkling clean windows. Most amazingly, the food in the snack car was actually pretty good. The whole scenario looked like an advertisement for something. The train pulled up at the Davis train station exactly on time, and I unhooked my bicycle from the train's cunningly designed bike rack and rode on to my appointment.
The reason for all these marvels? Those of you who've been to Washington, DC will remember how the home of the feds has one of the most comprehensive public transit systems in the country. The Capitol Corridor is called that for a reason - it ferries people from Silicon Valley through the Bay Area and ultimately all the way up to Sacramento, California's capitol. It does seem like a bit of an astounding coincidence that the nicest transit does seem to spring up around the tightest aggregations of lawyers and lobbyists. Rather than, say, around the tightest aggregations of people who can't afford cars. Oh, the cynicism.
