This weekend marks the grand opening of the Metro Gold Line, a light rail system that links Union Station, Los Angeles to Pasadena. Since this was the opening weekend, the rides were free. A lot of folks, including my family decided to take this opportunity to try it out. Luckily for us, there was a station less than half a mile away from home.

We boarded the train in the early afternoon and headed for Pasadena. There were relatively few people waiting at our local station, thus boarding was easy. Unfortunately, that was not the case at Pasadena when we were heading home. The station at Sierra Madre Villa was so jam packed that folks were waiting in line for over an hour. Thankfully, the MTA offered free buses that traveled to all the stations. We decided to ride the bus for our journey home.

Later in the day, Quy stopped by and wanted to try out the rail. We decided to call up Ernesto and see if he wants to ride the rail. Well, it turns out that he’s already at Pasadena, having taken the rail. So we decided to meet him there. We drove to Pasadena because it was already 5 pm and we heard that they were ending early and that the last train was at 6 pm.

When we got to Pasadena, we asked around and it turns out that they were running the trains until 1 am. So we parked our car by the station and took the rail with Ernesto and his family back to his house. After a brief dinner, we then decided to take it out to Old Town Pasadena. On the way there, we bumped into Naruki on the train and he decided to join us. Later at the bookstore, we bumped into Orng and Maisie. They were taking Maisie’s parents out to dinner. Wow, it’s a small world after all. What were the odds?