Trip Back Home

My visit to St. Louis was wonderful.

On Monday 1 March 2010 Dennis and I had breakfast with Fr. Martin at Denny's. I really enjoyed it. It is great just sitting and relaxing with your priest. If you have not had lunch or dinner with your priest, you should. Get to know your priest.

Of course if your priest has a full-time secular job and has a family with children, he might not have time to have dinner with too many people. If that is the case, then the people in the parish need to step up to the plate and make sure that things get done so that the priest can concentrate on the spiritual aspect of the community. Your parish should be like a family. Thank God that I can say that my parish is my family and I have said this about former parishes also.

After breakfast Dennis took me to the airport and I checked out luggage and then went over to the light rail stop and examined it. They have volunteers who come in and man the terminal and answer questions about the system. To take the train from the airport costs $1.00 more than if you took it from any place else. Like Baltimore, they have all-day passes as well as single trip fares.

Baltimore has weekly and monthly pass and you must get the monthly pass near the beginning of the month. Generally you can get it from the 25th of the current month through the fifth of the next month. Weekly passes can be purchased Thursday through Wednesday, but they are good Sunday through Saturday.

In St. Louis you purchasae a seven-day pass or 30-day pass and you can purchase it any time. Thus, if you purchase a pass on Wednesday, it is good from Wednesday through Tuesday. You can also purchase your passes in advance.

Another difference that I have noticed is that in St. Louis they discontinued many routes because of a lack of funds. In Baltimore we continue the routes, but cut back on the services. Right now the #7 stops a block from my house. During most of the day, it runs approximately every 30 minutes. If MTA is going to cut back on service, the #7 might run every 45 minutes instead of every 30 minutes. It is also possible that the #7 could be cut completely because about half of the route is basically parallel with the subway and part of it is parallel with the #10. Thus, it is conceivable that MTA could cut the #7 without doing major harm to people who rely on public transportation. But the MTA would not leave a whole section of the city without any public transportation as St. Louis seems to be doing.

Coming home I went through air port security and the personnel were fantastic. They addressed me by name and they were bragging over serving me.

As we were leaving Detroit the pilot brought to our attention the beautiful light show that Mother Nature was giving us and I took several photographs. Thank God that I had my Nikon D50 dSLR camera so that I could see immediately the results and make any necessary adjustments. The gentleman in the seat next to me was really impressed.

It was dark when I got back to Baltimore and I took the light rail home. After I settled down on the train, a ticket checker came and asked to see my ticket. I had forgotten where I put it and she was just about to ask me to come with her off the train when I found it. Aat the time I was buying my fares by the day since I often walk where I need to go.

This trip was one fantastic trip and I hope to make more like this.