I know...this series should be renamed "The WMATA Chronicles" instead of "RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!!" as often as I refer to D.C. Metro, but bear with me for a moment as I elevate my geekdom a smidge. Although I have been fascinated with Metro since 1985, I have never really been as obsessed over Metrorail as I have been with Metrobus...until now. Between the AM General buses of the 1970s and the New Flyer XDE40 (aka the "sexy boosas"), Metrorail's shiny new rolling stock manufactured by Kawasaki Heavy Industries is proof that you must have swagger to be part of any WMATA 7000 series. One day when taking a drive, I saw an eight-car configuration leaving Takoma in the direction of Silver Spring and was actually mad that I was in my car. (As abysmal as Metrorail has been as of late, that shouldn't ever be the case.) Lo and behold, my wish was granted a few days later when I was on my way to work and this thing of beauty came rolling into Silver Spring. So what does the resident H.M.G.I.C. (Head Metro Geek In Charge) like me do when this happens? Why, snap a 15-second video and convert it into a GIF, of course! What else would you expect from your ninth favorite blogger?!?! Come on, the trains just sound like an intergalactic spaceship of epic proportions, slim...and the rest of y'all D.C. folks know y'all feel the same way, too; I'm just dorky enough to admit it. Now that I've cemented my nerdiness and perhaps put some of you to sleep, I have four more pinches...
Ever since the NBA Playoffs were nearing their end and people realized that they would have to suffer through a summer with just baseball, my timeline has been flooded with "wake me up when it's football season" posts. Now that NFL training camps are open and preseason is here, everybody's posting all of this news about how this receiver is torching that high-profile cornerback or how some former No. 2 overall draft pick is back in impressive form...in practice. Although football has been my favorite sport since taking the reins from basketball in the late 90s and hasn't been unseated by any other sport since, I won't be as interested in football as I am with the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio until the Olympics are over. Are you looking at your computer screen or smart phone with heat in your eyes and bewilderment in your brain? Good...now allow me to explain...
I remember WKYS 93.9 FM's "93 Days of Summer" campaign during my teenage years, which was cool because there were always ticket giveaways for the Budweiser SuperFest and numerous other events as well as a summer's worth of life-changing, season-defining music. However, those 93 days worth of excitement weren't just limited to good music. If part of a summer program, there were plenty of field trips to museums, swimming pools and amusement parks. If it involved just chilling around the way, there was a progression from playgrounds and sandboxes to balling at the court and playing endless games of Uno, I Declare War, Tonk and Spades. Although I was a bit more of a homebody between the ages of 8 and 14, I could never resist the temptation of the sun. So as an ode to dope music, warm weather and all of the spoils that accompany my second favorite season, I bring to you the "Ninetysomething Days of Summer" edition of my "Rave & Favorite Five". Despite going back and forth about which decade is my favorite between the 1980s and 1990s, I kick things off with the only summer from the 80s to make this countdown. Despite a largely forgettable winter and spring and the second most bittersweet fall of my life, the 94 days of the summer of '87 still added up to the year's best quarter by a landslide. Although other summers like 1990, 1996 and 2001 could've easily given 1987 a run for its money, this particular summer largely involved free fun and sentimentality. So without wasting any more precious blog post space, let's rewind the clock 29 years and dig into the five reasons why the summer of '87 made my list...
