A More or Less Joyous Day on the M and the N….

Today I had a business lunch downtown, and got to finally wait in line and try out Taylor’s Automatic Refresher at the Ferry Building. I’d always wanted to go there, but never relished waiting in line, so it was nice to finally try it out. Sure you pay like, 12 dollars for a burger (and no fries). But it’s a pretty good burger, all said. (Besides, I never finish the fries anyway so I didn’t order any).
As my iPhone (aka iPhail, aka iLemon) has been driving me nuts with its horrific number of dead signals and whatnots, I finally called up Apple to find out if perhaps it was a hardware issue, and they set up a time for me to go to the Stonestown Apple Store to get it fixed. (Sure, I could have gone to the crazy one downtown, but the Stonestown store is a bit calmer). So I got on what I thought was an M-Ocean View at Embarcadero and headed out.
Now, there’d been a bunch of trains rushing throug the station and I was thoroughly engrossed in all things Twitter, so I wasn’t paying attention when I got on and was in fact on an N. No worries – I was able to get on the intended M at Church St. Station since it wasn’t too far behind, and all.
Besides, had I not boarded the N, I would not have seen that rarest of urban sightings – well behaved children on public transit. A group of little preschoolers boarded and you could tell in the faces of some of the riders they were worried they were in for a loud, sugar fueled festival of whimsy.
Absolutely not the case. These kids were polite, said “please” and “excuse me” and sat down quietly and talked amongst themselves. They listened to the teacher and you could tell everyone was just blown away by how orderly and friendly these little ones were.
I don’t mean to case on kids or anything, but if you’ve ever been on the bus with say, a pack of unruly teens who keep pulling the “Stop Requested” cable for EVERY SINGLE STOP, you know what I mean.
Anyway, this was all well and good until I realized I was on the wrong train. But I managed to walk to Church and actually catch the M that was a few minutes behind anyway. I made it to Stonestown where the good people at Apple determined that in fact, I did have a totally frakked iPhone. 10 minutes later I had a brand new one, and since I backed it up before I left the house, all would be well once I got home. Add in a quick visit to Trader Joe’s and the PO Box on the way back via the 44, and all was pretty good after all.
Also, thanks to all of you who called Speaker Pelosi’s office…I’ll be finding out how things went in the House today, but no matter what, it’s better to find something one can do to help out a little, since in the end we own MUNI.