Arizona Steve: NRA Annual Meeting

The NRA Annual Meeting was in Phoenix this year! The best part about the NRA Meeting is the show they put on. It's kinda like E3, but for guns. Awesome! In the past, I've traveled to attend the meeting, but this year it was right here at home.

I tried riding the new Phoenix light rail to the show so that I could give a bit of a review to the new system, which I have to say fails in a pretty epic fashion. First, in an entire day of riding around town on the train, I was the only person I actually saw buy a ticket. In fact, the ticket vending terminal actually had to boot up once I touched the screen since nobody had used it in so long. There are no turnstiles, access control, or as far as I can tell, persons enforcing ticket purchases. I'm pretty certain I was the only person that actually bought a ticket to ride that day. Next, the average wait between trains is about 10 minutes, and the stations are in the middle of the road with almost no shade. When its 120 degrees out, little canvas stretch shade thingies do not do the job. Finally, riding the light rail was inconvenient. Park n' Ride spots are few and far, and it's slow. I would rank it as slightly faster than riding the bus, but much, much slower than taking your car. Overall, I probably won't be using the light rail again for a long while. The only reason I could see trying it again might be to avoid the traffic problems when going to a ball game. I'll post another review when I try that one...

That being said, the NRA Show itself was sooooooo much fun! :D