I was planning on going on a hike today, but there was also a number of No Kings protest planned. As much as I wanted to hike, I ultimately decided that I would have just spent the whole time stressing about not going; so I went.
I did decided to try and make a bit of an adventure of it, and decided to take the Cleveland metro from the Airport park and ride to the event location near Ohio City station.
I knew that transit in America was worse than Japan, but I forgot just how much worse. The ticket machine didn't work, very few benches; On the train there was no indicator for the upcoming station, either in the form of an LED sign or prerecorded message. All you got was the driver barely mumbling the station name as you arrived, which was barely audible over the loud conversation of everyone in the train. The most frustrating part is how easy it would be to add some of these enhancements to existing trains.
In a crazy coincidence, about 5 minutes after boarding the train, one of my coworkers from Wolff Bros boarded the same car as me, along with his kids. They were on their way to a hockey game in downtown Cleveland. We talked for a bit, mostly about how good the trains in Japan were.
At least Ohio City station was kind of neat.
For the protest, after some speeches from local candidates, mostly encouraging everyone to vote early, we all marched across the Hope Memorial Bridge together.
It was neat seeing Cleveland from a new perspective, but also kind of sad how ineffectual it felt to try and spread any kind where there was no one to even notice.
By the time I was about half way across, I was dreading that I was just going to have to walk back, so I decided instead to just walk the whole way and then walk to Tower City to take the train back from there.
I had some kind of meh Teriyaki chicken and shrimp, and made my way to the Train platform. It failed to pull up the ticket I bought on the App, since there was no mobile service at the ticket gate, so I had to connect to the free wifi first. I got it eventually but it felt more cumbersome than it needed to be.
The trip back ended up being significantly worse. The train was packed, which I guess is a good thing economics wise, but at all times there was someone playing music from their phone, or watching some kind of AI narrated slop. I really wonder what its going to take to instill any amount of social responsibility in the minds of the median American.