An Impromptu Tour of Tukwila

RantMom had knee replacement surgery not too long ago. Since she moved to Seattle RantMom has been a real trouper about embracing The Bus almost as ardently as her daughters. After surgery though, she got signed up for our local paratransit service. The concept is one gets dropoff and pickup windows and the service basically works door-to-door. There might or might not be other passengers. One might get picked up at any time in one's pickup windows. That is the concept. Enough said?

RantWoman concedes that routing all these individual rides is probably not a walk in the park. RantWoman concedes that the kind of people who ride the paratransit can be the kind who vanish into thin air or just go to the restroom while the driver shows up looking for them. Or they have hearing impairments, vision impairments, reality impairments and other impediments to banal normalcy.

Driving for the paratransit service is one of those jobs RantWoman is glad to have done and very glad not to have to do herself, so RantWoman is trying really hard to give the driver the benefit of the doubt. RantMom has only just started to use the service and RantWoman admits to counting the days until RantMom has a story as lurid as all the others she has heard. Bingo!

Last night RantMom was hoping for a low-key no-nonsense perfectly ordinary and unremarkable trip from north of downtown Seattle to a little south of downtown.Instead she got a special bonus with her usual service. She got a trip to TUKWILA. Tukwila is a perfectly nice spot on the interstate, except that it is miles south of where RantMom lives.

There is a messy freeway interchange that could take RantMom even further astray. There is a perfectly nice shopping mall that RantWoman took RantMom to soon after RantMom came to Seattle. The experience was so exasperating and RantMom's appreciation of the comedic elements so lacking that we have not been back since. I think there are also some strip clubs and casinos, but RantMom is so not into either one.
In other words, Tukwila is really low on RantMom's destination travel list. Plus it was DARK, and I do not think the paratransit driver was a real dynamic tour guide. Should we just say RantMom was not amused? And of course I have heard about it ... and heard about it and heard...