Whatever hopes I had of being the first person to ride the light-rail were dashed fairly early. I was late getting to the station. The first train was headed in the wrong direction. The second was full. I felt somewhat inferior to a friend of mine who once bragged he was the first one to ever be served at his town’s brand new Bob Evans restaurant. I couldn't even show the gumption to push my way aboard.

So I waited. I stood on an overpass above Archdale Drive on a cold Saturday morning waiting for a train to take me to a place I didn't really need to go. I vowed weeks ago to ride the LYNX on opening day and actually believed that nobody else would have that same thought. I was wrong. Dozens of people now lined the platform, getting free stickers and commemorative t-shirts that were at least three sizes too large. I marveled at the police officer who came riding by on a Segway-- as if it would aid in the apprehension of any transit criminal who could easily escape by merely running down the stairs.

The third train arrived three minutes after a soothing female voice told me it would arrive in two minutes. This time I would not be denied and pushed my way aboard. The inside was sparkling and new and for the time being, free of graffiti and advertising. At least that’s what I could see in the gaps between the people.

Trains, or at least electric vehicles that run on rails which are much easier to just call trains, are different. You have a horn. They have WHISTLES. You drive on roads. They RIDE THE RAILS. You are a driver. They have CONDUCTORS. Trains have a mystique. They are elegant and graceful and go places you cannot go and do things your car cannot do.

We paused at several platforms, which made Charlotte suddenly cosmopolitan. Tyvola Station. Woodlawn Station. Scaleybark is not just the next road, it's the next STOP. At each station, more and more people appeared and only the most valiant and the least claustrophobic got on. There was just no room. We were crowded now. Just like a big city.

“Traveling is a fool’s paradise.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

All I really could see from my vantage point were the tops of heads and the tops of roofs and the backs of buildings and occasionally, an empty lot recently scalped by bulldozers and earthmovers. I could not see the angst of those who railed against the transit tax and perceived it as superfluous. I could not see the years of construction or the months of questioning or the weeks of anticipation. All I could see were people. Lots and lots of people.

As the train approached Uptown, it became apparent that nobody else would be able to board. The stops became more frequent and closer together. The Arena station appeared suddenly-- different only because it had a bigger rain canopy than the others. At that spot, half of the riders spilled out on to the platform; the other half decided to wait until the northern terminus: just two blocks away on 7th Street.

And in unison, after a ride on a train nearly a decade in the thinking and five years in the making, everybody on the platform asked themselves the same question: "Now what?"

It wasn't figurative or rhetorical. People literally wanted something to do. The city provided a mini-carnival in front of the arena. I played air hockey for a minute. I took a long walk. I made it all the way to the new Coffee Cup restaurant, which was at least a dozen blocks round-trip from where I had left the train. It was closed.

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” –Robert Louis Stevenson

I finally arrived at Reid's Fine Foods, which sits 15 feet from the end of the Blue Line and is now considered to have the best business location EVER. Workers, most likely used to having the place to themselves on a Saturday morning, tried to keep up with all the people who had just waited to take their first train trip Uptown and did not want to spend their entire stay waiting to go home. The mayor popped his head in and thanked everybody for coming and then donned a LYNX ball cap and disappeared. I drank a cup of coffee and bought a bottle of wine and when I could not stall any longer, got in line to go back.

When campaigning for the light rail, Mayor McCrory often spoke of what he called "the tyranny of the present." It's the inability to see into the future of what light rail is supposed to bring. It will become more of a necessity in the next few decades when the entire populations of Ohio and Buffalo decide to settle here and use our roads. People will move toward the line and homes and condos and shops and offices and all sorts of things that require planks and mortar and zoning variances will spring up and one day you will wake up and not have a car and you will not care. At least that is the vision.

On this day, however, the tyranny of the present was the line to get back on the train. The column of people at 7th Street bent around the block. The queue at the Arena station stretched all the way back to 6th. Across the street, the mayor waved at all of the people waiting in line and said "Sorry about the wait." He smiled the entire time.

“Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.” –Samuel Johnson

Cautiously guarded optimism surrounded me. People generally liked the train, which they were predisposed to, since they had risen early on a Saturday to ride it. But there was not overt gushing. People talked about trains they had ridden in the past. They made comparisons to Atlanta’s MARTA or Chicago’s El. "This is really great," one man remarked within earshot. "Twenty years from now, we'll really need..." He trailed off and revised his statement. "Well, I guess we can only wait and see what happens now."

Others talked about the cost. Several people, including a child, recalled that somebody had already died on the tracks. Those waiting in front of me suggested calling friends for a ride. I would wait forty minutes to get on a train to head back south. I thought to myself that there would never be a wait at the inception of, say, a brand new cross-town bus route.

On the way home, the view did not change much. I could not see skyrocketing prices for property, or whether any trip would ever be as packed as this one. I could not see a Purple Line or Silver Line out my window. All I could see were the passing streets and fewer and fewer people at each stop as all of us sped toward home, wherever home may be.

“The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.” –William Hazlitt

At Archdale, newly cosmopolitan, I stepped out. The tables and pamphlets and volunteers and stickers were gone. Buses chugged along below me. I could not see my house from here, only the rooftops of familiar buildings and cars, which were not bound to any rails but could take their drivers anywhere they needed to go, provided there was ample parking. Where was my car, I thought? Some day I may not care but that day had not arrived. I needed to complete my trip and a train would get me close, but not home.

On Saturday morning, the journey was most important. We rode because finally, we could, not because we must. But as the fanfare and free trips go away and the journey is no longer the focal point, we will wonder not when but why we will embark and what the real destination will be, and whether it’s worth riding the rails to get there.