Yesterday I did my second joyride of the new 2-line Crosslake Connection on Link Light Rail, all the way out to Downtown Redmond Station and back, this time with Shobhit. When I went with Laney three weeks ago, on Opening Day for the two new stations (Judkins Park and Mercer Island), we stopped at all 10 stations east and northeast of International District / Chinatown Station, before riding the entire route direct back from the end of the line at Downtown Redmond. Shobhit insisted it would be more efficient for us to ride direct all the way out to Downtown Remond first, and then stop at every station on the way back. I really resisted this at first, but in the end I was pretty glad that by the time we explored the very last station, at Judkins Park, we had only 5 stations to go back to Capitol Hill Station instead of 16 as would have been the case otherwise.

March 28 had been a big day and a huge event, being the first day ever that public riders could not only take Light Rail from Seattle to the eastside, but the first time they could ride a light rail train across a floating bridge, for the first time anywhere in the world. (This alone has brought us a smattering of global attention; I even discovered this relatively charming video by a guy from The Netherlands(!), as part of his apparently long running "Trains Are Awesome" YouTube page.) Anyway, being Opening Day, my original, East Link Extension / Crosslake Connection 2026 photo album contained a whopping 36 shots. I have a separate Flickr album dedicated to yesterday's excrusion with Shobhit, and that one contains 62 shots. That's just under half the volume, even though Laney and I had been out for about six and a half hours, whereas Shobhit and I were out for seven and a half hours yesterday.

There was a very obvious reason for that difference in time spent, though: Shobhit is all about the walking, and on our rides back from Redmond yesterday, we actually walked the roughly one or two miles, depending on the case, between stations two different times. First, because I had figured out Mayuri, the Indian grocery store in Redmond, is 0.8 miles from Overlake Village Station, we walked there from Overlake Village. And instead of walking back to Overlake Village, we walked from Mayuri to BelRed Station, which was another 1.2 miles away. In the second instance, I wanted to find a PCC store so I could take advantage of the Member Only Offer for a free bar of Private Label soap, I figured out PCC Bellevue is half a mile from Wilburton Station, and then from PCC we had only 0.4 miles to walk to Bellevue Downtown Station.

My whole impetus for riding the 2 Line again was to find all the public art I had missed on Laney's and my excursion three weeks ago—I didn't even realize how much I had missed. Many of the stations have multiple pieces at them. That said, there was a couple of stations at which I already got all the photos I needed, so yesterday I got no new photos at Overlake Village Station, Spring District Station, Wilburton Station, or Mercer Island Station—though I did still take a couple of new photos on Mercer Island. There was a public art sculpture about a block away from the station that we kind of liked.

Anyway, we probably spent more time at Downtown Redmond Station yesterday than at any of the other stations, largely because Shobhit had never really explored downtown Redmond and he was interested. We walked a bit through Downtown City Center, the shopping center just a couple of blocks away, but I also got more photos of the many art pieces at the station, as there's a ton of them there, all mounted atop polls like arty mosaic or painted billboards. One series is actually photos of a guy dancing, but I was partial to the series called Butterfly Garden. We did somewhat rush back so we would not have to wait an extra ten minutes for the next train, but in the end I think we spent about half an hour in Downtown Redmond.

At most stations, though, we got off and I took some quick photos and we managed to get on the next train coming 9 minutes later. This was how we managed at both Marymoor Village and Redmond Technology Stations; I already noted that we walked from Overlake Village to Mayuri and then to BelRed Stations. We again managed one-train cycles at Spring District Station, and then, as already noted, we walked from Wilburton Station to PCC Bellevue to Bellevue Downtown, where we spent some extra time. I looked all over for one of the art pieces there, which I finally figured out the location one station later, and it was one block further out than we had covered trying to look for it. I didn't want to backtrack by that point, though, so we took the train from Bellevue Downtown Station to East Main Station, and we managed one-train cycles both there and at South Bellevue Station.

Before I fully move on from Bellevue Downtown, though, I should note that we spent a good hour or so there, not just looking for that art installation I could not find, but Shobhit wanted to walk around Lincoln Square and Bellevue Square for a bit because he hadn't been to those shopping centers in ages. He decided he wanted French fries from The Cheesecake Factory and so we ordered some to go from there, and we made our way through a surprising number of skybridges on our way back toward the Bellevue Transit Center. He also noted that this coming holiday season we can easily take the train there now, to go check out the nightly "Snowflake Lane" street parade, which we haven't done in a long time—at least, not with him, anyway. The last time I saw it was kind of by accident, when I and other Groomsmen were shopping for wedding clothes some months before Gabriel and Lea's wedding, this taking us back to December 2023. The one time I am aware of Shobhit ever going is when we went with his cousins in 2017. So if we go this year, it'll have been nine years since he went.

I did think a lot about this yesterday, how this expansion of Light Rail has really made so much more of the region feel accessible to me. I'm never interested in driving all the way over to Redmond or even to Bellevue just for fun or for shopping, but I am far more open to it with Light Rail making it so accessible via public transit. This is the same with every Light Rail expansion, actually. Lynnwood (opened 2024), Federal Way (opened 2025), and Redmond (connected 2026) all no longer feel like "the outer rim" to me. I just love our Light Rail system so, so much.

One of the places we went to at Lincoln Square was the Container Store. Shobhit had ideas for his plants out on our condo balcony, and I had ideas for the one deep drawer I now have access to at my desk at work (with one shallow drawer above it). I want to create extra compartments to make it easier to store more stuff in there in a more organized way. I may have found a couple of ideas, but I need to actually measure the dimensions and then go back to the Container Store again to buy something. But all I need to do is take Light Rail to Bellevue Downtown Station, and there's no need to drive there! I mean, I still have the half-mile walk between Capitol Hill Station and home, but I think I can make do.

So, from South Bellevue Station, the next two stations were Mercer Island and Judkins Park—the two new stations. We spent a little bit of extra time at both, particularly Mercer Island, where we walked up to the ground level and walked a circle around a few blocks to come back in the west entrance at the other end of the platform. We happened to walk past a guy Shobhit recognized from working with him at Total Wine.

Then, at Judkins Park Station, the only art I needed to take photos of was on the platform (a bunch of awesome window murals, which I took eight shots of), but Shobhit still wanted to go up to the ground level at this station too. Just outside the entrance across the street from the park, Shobhit pointed out a nice vantage point for a photo of the station below, nestled between both directions of freeway traffic on I-90. I actually stood atop a short ledge to get that shot, with the fencing I looked over still being chest-high, but a transit employee who happened to be nearby saw me and asked me to get down because it was unsafe. I got the shot I wanted, so, whatever.

The guy was still very kind, I must say: he offered to take a photo of us together underneath the Judkins Park sign. Well sure, why not! I actually hadn't taken any photos of Shobhit and me together yet during this outing, so this seemed like as good a time and place as any.

So then we caught the train back to Capitol Hill Station, and I did laundry and we hung out at home the rest of the day. We had left the condo in the morning at 9:20; we were at Downtown Redmond Station by 10:20; we got a couple of Deli salad snacks at the PCC Bellevue store around 1:15; we finished at The Container Store around 2:45; and that last photo of us at Judkins Park Station was taken at 4:17. It was about 4:50 when we reached home again, thereby making the outing a seven and a half-hour excursion. It was still really fun and I look forward to using the 2 Line again and again.

[posted 12:26pm]