Translink card (or, curses pt. 3)

This morning I was telling my husband that BART's contract is up on the 30th -- and then wondered if that meant the strike could occur on the 30th? I have the 1st off, so if they striked on the 1st, what did I care. But I do care about the 30th. There are a couple of things that annoy me about the strike -- 1. The money I'll have to spend on bus fare when I have money sitting at the ready on my Translink card, and 2. that I'll be getting home later than I'm used to. Seems like I'll be spending most of my days just trying to get to where I need to go and not enjoying life.

I does really bother me that I'll have to pull out cash to buy bus fare, more now because we don't have the extra money for doing this, really. All our money is pretty much allocated for something already.

So off I go to BART. No big problems today. I parked in the back like I wanted to on Friday. I may just park back there all the time now -- you get to leave the parking lot via a traffic light. Very nice. No one even sat next to me this morning. Things seemed to going so smoothly. I got off at the Montgomery station, like normal, and walked through the swing gates. As I reached over to scan my Translink card, I noticed it said "Out of Order." Being the human that I am, I still tagged my card.

I stood in front of the station agent booth until one of them noticed me. I asked if the reader was really out of order, and she told me it was and that I should get it fixed or something. I'm still not even sure what our conversation was about. She was sure that it would be fixed in an hour, I think, and I was trying to get her to understand that I could no longer use my card unless I could tag it now (which still doesn't make any sense to me). Not that she cared or could even do anything so that I could tag my card.

So what does this mean? Now I have to send in my Translink card to get it "fixed." Which means I have to pull out extra money to buy a BART ticket. So, regardless of the strike or not, I'm still out extra cash! Curses!