Max Pictures’ Blather

…for 2008—unless something compelling pops up between now and midnight.
This messy, sunset sky is from Monday, when BART (running 5 minutes late) and Amtrak (running 2 minutes early) conspired to keep me at the Richmond station for an extra 45 minutes. I guess the mass transit gods wanted me to see this sky over the [...]

…of the Downtown Berkeley BART station, Christmas Eve morning.
Slow day today. Got in to work, had coffee, checked email, had lunch, headed home.
Happy Christmas Eve Day!

…nothing special.
Standard start yesterday. A little slow off the blocks. Caught the sunrise over the slough. Got my cafe car special: BART ticket, breakfast croissant, and coffee. (It’s not really a special, but the BART ticket is discounted.)

After the recent quesadilla debacle and my previous unhappiness with the new breakfast burrito, the egg and bacon [...]

…worse than than old breakfast.
I was introduced this morning to a frightening new train-based mobile breakfast technology: the Breakfast Bacon and Egg Quesadilla. Deceptively simple in its appearance and microwave-delivery, the quesadilla belied its complex factory-preparation and lab-based ingredients.
And, it tasted terrible.

Actually, it wasn’t how the quesadilla tasted, it was the texture. Part of the [...]

…a really new day.

…one solution (and one additional problem).
As I’ve kvetched about before, there are challenges to taking photos on the train. There’s motion: swaying like a ship in 15-foot seas; vibration like a hideously unbalanced clothes dryer. Lighting: cars with zero interior lighting; cars with bland fluorescent lighting. People: passengers thinking anyone with a camera is a [...]

…in the lounge car.
I was running late this (Wednesday) morning. Consequently, I was treated to the sun rising over the marsh between Suisun and the Carquinez Strait (about midway through my commute). To celebrate, I ordered a sumptuous Capitol Corridor breakfast—coffee and a breakfast croissant—to accompany my discounted BART ticket.

The plate in the photo is [...]

…stuck on the tracks.
Such was the case last week when the track switches broke down outside of Suisun. Train traffic stacked up for about 40 minutes before our Capitol Corridor train arrived and our conductors got out to flip the switches by hand. As the congestion started to sort itself out, it took another 20 [...]

…versus there.
I took a little longer to get out of the house this morning and reached the station after the sun had come up. Another bright, sunny, Central Valley morning. The train came, I boarded, we headed off for the Bay Area.
About 40 minutes later, the train reached the Carquinez Strait—the edge of the fog-socked [...]

…on Saturday.
Once a year I have to work on a Saturday. That Saturday was this past weekend. Usually I drive from the Central Valley to the Bay Area, but this year I decided, “Why treat it differently from any other work day?” I took the Capitol Corridor and BART, same as usual.

Slight hitch though; both [...]